


Love Me Now Forever

by WhatBecomesOfYou



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 00:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatBecomesOfYou/pseuds/WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Season 8 finale spoilers/minor season 9 speculation, but no known season 9 spoilers. "Word has it that it’s a very bad thing if a living person sees a dead person." When Izzie and Mark start to see the ghosts of those they had loved prior to their death, they seek out answers. What those answers lead to is an opportunity beyond anything they could have ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Me Now Forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [red_b_rackham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham/gifts).



> Season 8 finale spoilers/minor season 9 speculation, but no known season 9 spoilers. Minor background Callie/Arizona, mostly in reference to their being canon (although they do make a small appearance). Mentions of various past canon couples, especially with regards to Izzie, George, Mark and Lexie. 
> 
> If the afterlife or ghosts are not your thing, this fic is probably not for you, as it deals heavily with both, and discusses canonical character death.
> 
> [Love Me Now Forever [Fanart], by red_b_rackham](http://archiveofourown.org/works/494547).
> 
> Thank yous at the end. Title comes from the song "The Last Words You Said," by Sarah Brightman.

Lexie expected the first person she saw after she died to be her mother. Or maybe it would be Mrs. Weller, the older woman who lived down the street from her when she was a child and gave her chocolate chip cookies for every A on her report card, who had died when Lexie was ten. It had been a sudden stroke, the doctors had said. Nothing anything anyone could have done could have saved her. Maybe, just maybe, it would even be a complete surprise, like Audrey Hepburn or someone who lived and died in India in the 16th century. Or maybe St. Peter at the pearly gates of Heaven, making sure that she was a good person who deserved the right to enter and enjoy all the bounteous pleasures of ever after. Someone like that.

Somehow, she never expected her first to be George O’Malley, of all people.

Even though, after reflection, it was one of the most logical choices it could have ever been. They had known each other, and were friends once and then somewhat cordial after that, and of all the people she had been in contact with that had died since she started working at Seattle Grace, he was the one that was the most likely to _want_ to see her again. For two people who had not really been overtly friendly when he died, she had found herself missing him quite a bit whenever she thought about him.

“Hey, Lexie?” he said, walking up to her and placing his hand on her shoulder in an attempt at a consoling gesture. “What are you -”

“Plane crash. I think a case is being made for doctors living in caves somewhere in Siberia, except then there would be a meteor strike or something.” George frowned at her words and wrapped his arms in an endless loop around her shoulders without saying a word in reply. She trembled a little as she hugged him back, clinging to him for dear - well, _life_ was not the appropriate word. Not here. But he was the one recognizable thing she had found so far in this strange, foreign land. Everything was so cold and starkly gray, in comparison to the vivid shades of blue and green that populated her daily life. She had never been one to bask in the colors of the world, but now she wanted every color in the palette.

For that fact alone, she was not going to leave his side; she would shadow him and follow in his footsteps. They did have forever to spend together, and he could be a good teacher for her as to the best way to live the life of the dead.

* * *

“Why did I always think that Derek was going to be the next doctor from Seattle Grace to join me over here?” George said, as they sat on a pile of rocks near a large crowd of people and talked in hushed whispers. “Him or Cristina, I could never decide. One or the other.”

Lexie shrugged and watched the multitudes of faces pass by. There were _so many_ people milling around, and she could catch snippets of conversations being held in what appeared to be different languages, although she could understand each and every one of them. It was a veritable Tower of Babel situation up here. A young girl darted in between the legs of an old man, her giggling echoing throughout the area. “They were on the flight with me, but - apparently they both lived.”

“Who was all on it, anyway?”

She counted off on her fingers the six names of the six passengers. “Me, Mark, Arizona - the blonde peds surgeon that Callie was dating, if you don’t remember her that well - Meredith, Derek and Cristina. Six of us were on that plane, and I’m the only one that dies. Fan-fucking-tastic.”

His face dropped at the mention of Callie. “At least she’s happy now?” His voice was barely above a hoarse whisper as he asked it. “That’s what counts, right?”

“Yeah. She’s married and has an adorable daughter that she adores, so. Life is good for her these days.”

“That’s good. I - I don’t really spend much time around the hospital, even though I could totally get away with it.”

“What do you do with your time then?”

“Visit Izzie, mostly, or just wander around here. I went to New York City once and wandered the streets surrounding Times Square, but it was just _depressing_ to do that when you’re dead. Wish I could have gone back when it would have meant something more.”

“You can _do_ that?”

“Go to Times Square? Yeah. You can go basically wherever you want. Some people up here talk about how many different places and countries they’ve been to and they only count the ones after death.”

“No. Visit people like you visit Izzie.”

“Oh. Yeah. You’ve heard of ghosts, right?” He moaned and shook his hands in front of Lexie’s face in an imitation of the stereotypical ghost; she nodded, and he took that as acknowledgment. “Yeah. That’s basically what a ghost is. There are some limitations, I think, like I don’t think you can visit a private residence that you have no connection to either the location or any of its residents at all, but other than that -”

“So I could visit Mark?” She was hopeful that she could. It would be nice to see him, and find some way to reassure him. Even if it meant being a ghost. Not ideal, but it would do.

“Do you know Mark?”

She looked at him with a confused expression on her face. “Uh - _yeah_? Mark Sloan. Not John-Mark Doe formerly of Chattanooga.”

“Then yes, of course, you can visit him. Maybe we’ll pop down there and visit him sometime soon. For you.” He smiled at her and patted her hand. “At least you’re not alone up here. You will always have me.” He stood up and pointed off in the distance. “There’s a bunch of trees and fields out there. It’s nice and peaceful and not a madhouse like this can be. It’s a good area to be alone and reflect on life.”

“Sounds like a good place to spend a while.”

* * *

Izzie thought she had put Seattle - and Seattle Grace and her disastrous marriage to Alex and everything related to it - in the rearview mirror of her life. She had moved past it, and had formed a new life for herself over in Tacoma. Still close by, but not close enough where she had to relive every day of her old life unless she had a burning desire to do so.

Until the day she opened her internet home page over her morning cup of coffee and saw the headline on the breaking news ticker - “1 Dead, 5 Injured in Washington Plane Crash.” Her curiosity got the better end of her; it always did, and she clicked on the story.

And Lexie Grey’s smiling face stared out at her from her computer screen. She had not seen Lexie in a few years, but she had not changed that much from the Lexie she remembered as one of the new batch of interns. Meredith’s little half-sister. George’s friend. The caption read: “Alexandra Grey, 27, of Seattle, Wash., the sole fatality of a medical plane crash near Albion, Wash.”

She had seen so much death in her life, and come so close to it herself with her tumor, but it was still a punch to the gut to see someone she once knew and worked beside reduced down to a single caption line in a news article about her death. The article would be buried by another story once this one was no longer newsworthy, of course, and most people would forget about the victims.

A sudden jolt of a cool wind blew through her apartment, and she wrapped the blanket around her tighter. She was used to this by now - the sudden coldness only ever came when she thought too long and hard about any one thing, especially if the thing was something that made her upset. It was almost a form of comfort anymore. Maybe it had started once she left Seattle behind and no longer had the companionship of her fellow former interns to help console her; she could not remember anymore, but the cool wind was both omnipresent as well as welcome in her life. At one time she had entertained the thought of her apartment being haunted by the ghost of some former inhabitant who died a tragic death at a young age. Maybe a violent death - murder or suicide or something. However, after finding out she was only the fourth person to occupy the apartment and all the other former inhabitants were still alive when they left, she had put that particular theory to rest. It never failed though - every time the wind blew through her apartment, she could not help but feel comforted and secure.

A smile formed on her face as she reached for her coffee and clicked away from her home page to take a minute to check her email before starting the rest of her day. The thought of having her own private ghost to make her feel better was a positive thing that she was not going to take for granted. “Hi, Casper,” she said with a forced smile, looking everywhere around her and trying to aim her words toward where she thought the spirit could be. “Hope your day is going better than mine is so far.” In the absence of another name to call her ghost, she defaulted to the first thing she could think of; it was better to call him Casper than a series of muted screams and expletives. Nicer, too.

In response to her query, a bouquet of fake daisies she had resting on her end table tipped over. Petals came detached from the stems and fluttered to the carpet below in a colorful, silken cascade. She set down her coffee cup, walked over, and scooped the petals up into her cupped palms. A cool wind spiraled around her and made the petals dance in her hands, leaping up in the air and then falling back down, before repeating the process. She allowed the dance to go on for a minute or two, before the petals spilled from her hands and fell back to the carpet below. “Okay,” she said, “if you want to make a point to me, you can just say it, you know.”

 _Knock. Knock._ _Knock._

The repetitive knocks sounded as if they were coming from her kitchen table, almost as if someone was pounding their fist into the table over and over again. She huddled her back against the armrest of the couch and curled her arms around her shins. “What are you doing, Casper? What do you _want_ from me?”

Almost as sudden as it started, the knocking abated; she looked up with tentative hope, only to see the blanket that had been sitting on her couch inching toward her. She sat paralyzed, unsure of what was happening - she had seen more than her share of horror movies before, because, for some reason, guys she tended to date enjoyed taking her to them and watching her scream. But she had seen this too many times in the horror movies: the blanket would cover her and tighten around her and suffocate her. And considering no one else was around, no one would be there to hear her calls for help, and she would die, and - and then she looked up. The blanket was being tucked with careful precision around her chin, and instead of suffocating her, it was as if the ghostly hands that did the work were trying to comfort her.

It was an odd dichotomy that was at work, between the sheer terror she had felt at the knocking sounds and the relaxed comfort she felt now, but such was life with her own personal Casper floating around.

* * *

It had been three months and ten days since they had boarded that flight.

Three months and ten days since his life as he knew it had come to a screeching halt.

Lexie. _His_ Lexie. It was not fathomable. It was not _fair_. Why would she be taken and he be spared? There was no rhyme or reason to it.

Prior to the crash, and its aftermath, he never could have imagined his life without Lexie being in it - once she was there, she left an unmistakable imprint that no amount of dating other people or other quantifiable factors could remove. He had taken it for granted that she would always be there, his Little Grey, with the wide, easy smile and a heart that had more love to give than she knew what to do with. They had both taken each other for granted, and - and now there were no more tomorrows.

He was stuck somewhere in the abyss between denial and acceptance, with no visible signs pulling him toward one or the other.

If only there could be.

The blankets on his bed were warm, uncomfortable and somewhat stifling as he shifted around under them, squirming against the weight of Lexie’s memory and the - what was it that his hospital-provided therapist called it again, survivor’s guilt? Something like that. And in a way, the blankets and sheets were like cloth vises, suffocating the life out of him.

Lexie had had survivor’s guilt too, he remembered, sitting straight up in bed with a flash. That damn shooting - he could have lost her then too. And then they would have never had the chance to work things out, or screw them back up, and it would still be the same end result, just in a different order and with a different catalyst - human, instead of machine. It would be easier to hate a human for taking her away, because then he could put a face to his hatred. Instead. Instead he was stuck hating _airplanes_ , of all things. He liked airplanes, for the most part. The feeling of flying through the air and being above the clouds was one that he always enjoyed - until that day. Now, he wanted nothing more to do with them. Ever.

It was not like he had gotten away without a physical scratch himself - looking down at his body, he saw the scars and lines that had not been there before, tracing the pattern of his survival through the crash and the months-long aftermath. The other doctors, the ones who had saved his life, told him that he was lucky - told him that not everyone could have survived what he just did. And yet, he could not help but feel like spitting the word back in their face. None of them were _lucky_. Arizona was walking on a prosthetic leg that Callie had made, working day by day to re-learn the basics of walking again. He and Derek had both spent days in medically-induced comas. All of them had a new collection of scars that made them look like they had survived something akin to a war, and if the gossip he overheard was accurate, they were all tormented enough by their emotions and memories of the day for that to be more than sufficient for the rest of their lives. That was not what he would call luck. It would be what he would call pure hell on Earth. Surviving was a worse punishment than even the most agonizing of deaths.

One day, some of the physical scars would fade into a silvery thread winding their way around his torso, others would then dull to a shade of brown fairly close to his own skin tone. And yet, they would never leave him, forever serving as a reminder of a day he would much rather forget. But, still, his emotional scars ran deeper than any physical scar ever could.

As he sat there thinking about what had been going on, he felt a brush of something cool brushing at his shoulder. The air conditioner was off, and the windows were sealed, so there would be no way for anything - it was like - maybe he was imagining things. And still, the brushing continued for a minute or two, while he sat there immobile and quiet. The feeling crept up to the side of his neck, fluttering back and forth along the muscle that was there, and then he _knew_ he was not imagining things. If he did not know better, he would swear it was the light touch of a human hand, and, acting on instinct, he leaned into the touch. It had been too long since he had felt someone - anyone - touch him in anything but the most perfunctory and professional of manners.

And then he stopped.

He was alone. All alone. And had been since the last time Callie and Arizona had stopped over to check on him and give him a frozen lasagna - and he could not remember how long that had been by now. It had been at least a few days by now, and his next therapist appointment was not for a few more. As he came to the realization about his current status, it was his delusion about the situation that made it all the more unsettling for him. His therapist would have a field day with this, if he told her about it. He would more than likely have to.

He was alone. No one was there to be touching him, let alone stroking him with such affection and love. It was all in his head.

Leaning his head forward, he buried his face in his hands. This was what his grief had done to him. This was what the past three and a half months had done to him.

This was what loving - and losing - Lexie had done to him, and that was the most painful part of all.

* * *

Lexie stepped back away from Mark and faded into the wall, where, in short order, she was joined by George. “How did it go?”

“I wish I could have done more,” she stated, burying her face into her hands. “He seemed so -”

“Lost?” George supplied, trying to help her find the word she was searching for. “Upset? Grieving?”

“Yeah. All those. He just -” She wanted to cry. She felt like she needed to cry; that welling-up feeling inside her threatened to spill everywhere, and yet - there were no tears that fell. It was difficult being dead and trying to express her emotions in the traditional ways. “I wanted to read his mind, know what he was thinking about, and be able to comfort him. And all I could do - all I _could_ do - was brush my hand on his shoulder like it was nothing at all! Like I was petting a puppy!”

“You do realize that he was thinking about you, right? In all the times I’ve gone to see Izzie, I’ve never touched her.”

“Does she think about you, though?” She deflected the first question, the hard question, the million-dollar question. It was too hard to think about being the reason for Mark - confident, suave, sexy _Mark_ \- wallowing in a dark bedroom alone at night, lost in memories of a bygone time.

“She sometimes talks to herself and -” George dropped his voice to a whisper and moved in closer to Lexie, and then finished his sentence. “- and, she mentions me from time to time. As a regret.”

Lexie tilted her head to one side and pressed her index finger to her pursed lips. This was brand new information to her. “Why would she -”

“The one thing I wish I could have told her before - before I - well, _you know_ \- is that I love her? And, I don’t know exactly why, but maybe she thinks that Alex was a mistake? She’s impulsive, and - and she likes to go back and try to fix her old mistakes, but -”

“Something her and I have in common.” Lexie could not help but draw the parallels that were begging to be drawn: Izzie with both Alex and George, her with both Alex and Mark. They both followed their hearts to their logical conclusion. And she could not help but feel a strange kinship with Izzie in that moment, beyond their chosen profession and workplace. “Does she know about you, though?”

“That _I_ pop in and visit unannounced every now and then? No. Does she know _something_ does? Yes. She calls me Casper, of all things. Her best friend, reduced to being a friendly ghost in a white sheet.”

“So you’ve never appeared to her, then.”

“How would I do that? ‘Oh, hi, Izzie, it’s George, remember me? I’ve been haunting you for the past three years or so.’” He laughed, and then shook his head. “How about I _don’t_ do that?” Pausing for a moment, he continued. “She’s alive. I’m dead. Besides, I don’t think we’re supposed to be visible. That’s what the others say.”

Her heart sunk a bit at the final thing he said. She had hoped - one day - that maybe she could appear to Mark. Show him that, despite all the barriers in their way, she could still be a part of his life, that she was still thinking about him. Given what she knew, she knew that he could feel her, and she imagined that if she were to speak in his presence, he could hear her. But they were deprived of one of the most crucial of the senses: sight. “Are you sure?”

“Before you came? There wasn’t much for me to do besides rehash old sports scores with my pa and haunt Izzie. So I listened. A lot.”

“And?”

“People are _really_ chatty when they’re dead and they don’t think it matters anymore.”

“ _And_?”

“How much do you want to know about dead people’s former lives? I can tell you who killed JFK, who Jack the Ripper was, where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is -” He waggled his eyebrows in a titillating manner. “All the sex scandals of nineteenth-century Italy, what’s up with the Bermuda triangle -”

“Get to the point.”

“So, basically, word has it that it’s a _very bad thing_ if a living person sees a dead person. There’s a difference between dreaming about us and actually, you know, seeing us in the flesh, as it were.”

“But they can’t, you said. I could dance around naked in front of Mark and he wouldn’t blink, because he couldn’t see it.”

“Exactly. So if they _can_ -”

“Then something’s very wrong. Apparently.” She frowned.

George nodded and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, though. At least we can still see them, and they haven’t seen us. And they shouldn’t ever see us, so it’s not going to be an issue.”

* * *

Mark popped one of Callie and Arizona’s frozen casseroles into the oven one night; he paced circles around the kitchen as it cooked. He had almost put everything from the strange nocturnal visit out of his head. Almost a week had passed with no further incident, to the best of his knowledge. An occasional odd, unexplainable thing had happened, like his car keys being on the nightstand when he had sworn he had put them on the counter last time he went out, or the one morning when he woke up to find a fresh pair of clothing set out for him to wear. Even if he did not tend to set his clothes, nor would he have chosen the ones that were selected - although he _did_ end up wearing them that day. Things like that. Unnerving, maybe, but nothing to lose sleep over at night.

He continued pacing back and forth. Ten more minutes.

From behind him, he heard some sort of strange noise. It almost sounded like gurgling, or as if someone was pouring something. He turned around, and gasped.

A glass bottle of Diet Coke hovered in the air above the kitchen table, pouring out brown carbonated liquid into two glasses below. Invisible hands guided the bottle with laser-guided precision. He looked closer. “Who’s there?” he called out, stepping closer to the table. “Who -”

The bottle dropped and shattered into a thousand pieces on the tabletop. A shadow of a person flitted in the background.

And then - he looked again, and the faintest edge of facial features were visible on the shadow’s form. He grabbed for the edge of his counter to regain his balance, because he was certain that if he did not do something soon, he would faint. He would recognize the face _anywhere_. Even if he lived to be a thousand years old and never saw another face again, he would recognize it without question.

“Lexie?” he called out. “Lexie! _Lexie_!” The form extended its arm toward him, but it dissipated into a fine mist, before it disappeared altogether, leaving him staring at a blank wall across the room. Tears flowed down his face. “Lexie! Come back! Please! _Lexie_!”

Of course it was her. It could never be anyone _but_ her. If he had thought that his strange nocturnal visitor could have been anyone else, he would be deluding himself. If only it could be just a delusion. Then he could stop the worrying and wondering about what it was that Lexie wanted out of him.

After all, why else would she be haunting him?

* * *

“He saw me!” Lexie said, throwing herself against the ground and pounding her fists against the dirt. “He saw me, and he called out my name, and I couldn't do anything! George, why have you let me visit him all these times? I’m only going to make his grieving process even worse. Why do I even bother?”

“Because,” George said. He rubbed large circles with the flat palm of his hand on her back and tried to comfort her. “Because you _want_ to see him. You want to know that he’s surviving day to day without you, and that time will march on eventually, despite the fact that he loves you and you obviously love him.”

“He’s miserable, George. He barely leaves his place, and Callie and Arizona have to bring him frozen dinners for him to stockpile, like he’s a new mother or an invalid or something! And I feel so responsible for that. I should have been able to find it in me to live. He’s not the same Mark, and I’m the reason why.”

“Mark was always somewhat nicer when you were a major part of his life,” George stated. “If he’s not the same Mark as he once was, it’s because you changed him for the better. I promise you that.” He paused for a moment, the full impact of Lexie’s words sinking in. “Wait. He saw you? Like, _saw you_ , saw you? With his eyes?”

“No, George, he saw me with his penis. Of course he saw me with his eyes! He looked straight at me, and he called out my name - Lexie! - and then I was back here with you.” She turned over and looked up at George’s concerned face. “Why? You said it was bad, but -”

“It’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“Seriously bad. Like, I’ve heard it described as the bonds between life and death are dissolving and no one’s safe, but that was some crazy guy ranting and raving, not - not anything I’d take seriously, I don’t think, but - that’s _not_ good.” He paused. “I’d lay low and avoid visiting Mark for now. Or anyone that you know, really. I hear Tahiti’s nice this time of year?”

She grumbled and flopped back over to bury her face into the dirt. “But I don’t _want_ to go to Tahiti. Dead people can’t tan. Not that I ever tanned much, but, if I was going to Tahiti, I’d want the opportunity to.”

“I understand, but, just promise me, you won’t visit Mark any time soon.” He was not sure if he could keep the promise for himself and Izzie, but he would try. After all, there was no guarantee that just because Lexie could be seen, that he would be as well.

“I promise,” she said, an acidic tone tinging her voice. “Not that I want to, but - for now.”

* * *

Izzie sat on her couch and flipped through the channels. There was never much on when she wanted to sit down and watch something, but there was always a ton on whenever she was too busy or not in the mood. At last, she came upon an old black and white movie that she had watched a few times at a babysitter’s, but never since she was a child. It was already about halfway through, so she pulled the blanket around her and settled into watching.

The heroine of the film was lifting her leg to show the hero how to hitchhike, and Izzie found herself enraptured. It was so easy for her to lose herself in movies, when she let herself relax like that.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of movement. She ignored it at first. It was a trick of the eye. That was what it had to be. Just a trick of the eye, nothing to worry about.

And then she saw someone striding across her room, walking in front of the television and continuing on past, ignoring her or the two characters talking on screen. She blinked - once, twice - and looked back. Was it -? She rubbed her eyes and looked again. It _was_. It was him. It was George, acting as though he was walking through a room like any normal human being would.

George was Casper. Casper was George.

And it all made so much more sense now.

* * *

Being doctors in the same hospital for a period of a few years, Izzie had seen Mark in just about every imaginable state. However, the one state she was not used to was the one that greeted her after his door swung open: his eyes were red and bloodshot, and he was wearing a beat-up old rag of a U-Mass t-shirt and ratty sweatpants. “Can I come in?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair. She was anxious and nervous, not knowing for sure how he would react to her visit. At his nod, she took that as the closest thing to an acquiescence as she was going to get and she walked on in, settling down on the couch; he took the easy chair, and looked over at her.

“What are _you_ doing here?”

It was a question that she still was unsure on how to answer, regardless of how many different answers she had run over through her head on the drive between Tacoma and here. What answer could be given with any sort of satisfaction? It was not as though she had come back calling when that mass shooting happened, and it was not like she had ever been that close to Mark - or Lexie, for that matter. “I - I thought I would say I’m sorry. In person, I mean. You were - you were dating Lexie, weren’t you?”

“No.” His initial answer was brief and succinct, and he rocked back into the chair. Pressing the tips of his fingers together and bowing his forehead to touch them, he continued. “I wish - You didn’t answer my question. What _are_ you doing here? None of us have heard from you in years and now, after all this time, you come to my place to tell me you’re sorry about - about _Lexie_. And that happened _months_ ago.” His eyes flashed in anger for a moment before settling to the dull dusk that they had been.

“When George died,” she started, choosing her words with an even and slow temperament, as she closed her eyes and lost herself in the memories of the time, “I - I lost someone important to me too. And not everyone thought about my reaction as such, and I’ve debated on if I wanted to get in contact with you and how -”

“You and O’Malley were friends, weren’t you?”

“Best friends, from practically the first day we started at Seattle Grace.” She hesitated before continuing. When her and George were together, the people who knew had not reacted well, and she knew that Mark and Callie were very close and tight-knit. Their friendship was by no means a well-kept secret, although not much was in the water cooler environment of their hospital. He may or may not have had pre-conceived notions about what went on between them. This was heightened with more potential negative emotions in regards to how it affected Callie in a negative manner. “We were together for a while, too.”

“As in - _oh_. _That_.”

“It could have been better timing, I guess. We never had good timing.” She offered a tentative smile, and hoped that it was not going to lead to him kicking her out in anger. Maybe he and Callie had had a falling out. Maybe it did not matter, now that it was in the past? Callie had probably found someone new. She was dating that blonde peds surgeon when she left, after all.

“I can’t agree with what happened back then between the three of you,” he said, choosing his words with caution. “But I - I can’t fault you for what happened either. The past is in the past, and Callie is married with a kid now, so - she’s moved on. You can too.”

Izzie breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh my gosh, thank you. You don’t know how much that means for me to hear it - especially coming from her best friend.”

“You still haven’t explained what George’s death has to do with you coming here.” He exhaled a sharp breath and continued, “George’s death had nothing to do with Lexie’s, and if you wanted to extend a sympathy call - well, her funeral was a while ago.”

“Three and a half months. It’s been three and a half months,” she said. “And I’ve spent - not every day, but quite a few of them - debating if I wanted to reach out and say anything to you, and if so, how and what to say. And then, the other day -” she paused. Her throat felt dry and parched. If Mark had no experience with what she was talking about, then he was going to think she was crazy and needed a straightjacket and a nice white room with padded walls. “Actually, uh - before I get into that -”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember when I was dying of skin cancer?”

“I think _everyone_ does. Your shotgun cancer wedding to Alex and you almost dying on the same day George did - those kind of left an impression. And it’s not like our hospital was a dry, boring place on even the best of days.”

She nodded and drummed her fingers against the side of the armrest. “One of - one of the initial symptoms that something was wrong with me was that I was having very - _very_ powerful hallucinations. Vivid. Not only seeing, but feeling, touching -” she said, blushing at the memory, “- tasting. It was a complete sensory overload in every sense of the word.”

“But what -”

“Let me finish before you start asking questions, because then it will all make more sense then. I didn’t realize something was actually wrong until I ran some tests on myself, etcetera, yay, cancer diagnosis, you know most of the rest of the story from there.”

“What was the point of telling the story to me, then, if I already knew most of it?”

“Because the hallucinations I told you about? They were of Denny. I - I don’t remember if you know about Denny, but he was a patient that needed a heart transplant really badly - I fell in love with him in spite of everything - I cut his LVAD wire so that he would go to the top of the transplant list and he ended up _dying_ because of what I did - and it was really screwed up and bad and, yeah, that’s the basic story there.”

“Okay, so what do seeing hallucinations of Denny and your subsequent brain tumor have to do with anything? Besides the fact that you have _really_ crappy luck when it comes to falling in love with guys who don’t die.”

“I thought Denny was a ghost at first. I thought I was - you know - having sex with a ghost, and then it ended up being a hallucination, a product of my own body fighting against me. And it shook me to the core, Mark. I - I think Alex had a hard time trusting me after that, and I - I haven’t been with anyone since I divorced Alex. I was afraid of letting myself fall for anyone and have this happen all over again.”

“Is this all about your lack of a love life? Because coming to a man who is grieving for someone whom he loved more than life itself and asking him to have sex with you - or even worse, fall in love with you - by talking about your tumors is a new low in the history of lows. Like, grab a shovel and prepare to have lo mein and moo goo gai pan for lunch in Beijing tomorrow because you’re about to end up in China with how far down you’re going.”

“ _No_!” she shouted, almost in hysterics. “Mark, that’s not what I’m saying. Not at all. I - I - I’m seeing ghosts again. And it’s different this time, because it feels more real.”

“Is it Denny? Are you seeing him again? Because, if you’re seeing someone whose death you caused -”

“ _No_ ,” she said with additional emphasis. “And that’s - that’s why you got the capsule version of my relationship with George, because it’s him. I’m seeing George again, Mark. _George_. He walks and acts so much like you or I that I can’t believe that he’s not really there, until he’s _not_ anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if I came home from being here with you and found him kicked up on my couch, resting his feet on my ottoman and reading the morning newspaper with a cup of coffee. That’s how real it feels.”

“How can you be _sure_ your brain tumor has not returned, then? How is this any different than what you said you happened back then? With Denny, except now, it’s with George and you’re - you’re not having sex with George’s ghost too, are you? Because if you _are_ -”

“Because you see her too,” she whispered, placing her hand on top of his and closing her eyes. It was hard to look at him when she was about to say something that had the potential to shake his world down to the core. It was even harder, considering she was not certain with complete totality that what she was about to say was even true. “You see Lexie. That’s the difference. And no, I’m not having sex with George’s ghost. I’m not going down that rabbit hole again.”

His eyes went blank and cold again, and he gripped the side of the easy chair with bare knuckles. “H-How did you know?” he stammered. He had not told anyone about seeing Lexie, because admitting to seeing Lexie meant getting treated with kid gloves and having discussions with the psych attendings that he did not want to have; he’s _Mark Sloan_ , damn it, and he has more pride than a group of lions. Seeing Lexie was supposed to be his dirty little secret that he did not share with anyone, let alone someone who had not been a part of his life at all in a good three years or so.

“You see Lexie. I see George. There - there _has_ to be a pattern, or a meaning, or something. There just has to be. Things don’t just happen for no reason, and I highly doubt both of us suddenly have tumors like the one that I had. Nor are we tripping on some _really_ weird drugs.”

“I _love_ Lexie. You were married to Alex when George died.”

“When I - when George and I broke up - we told each other - maybe someday, we could give us a chance again. And someday never came. Not for us.”

His lips turned downward into a frown at her admission. “You know, I told Lexie - if she lived, that we could get married and have a family. Boys. Give Sofia - Callie’s kid - brothers. Siblings, actually, a whole fucking family. There’d have been a girl too. She’d have been daddy’s little princess.” His laugh was caustic and bitter as he remembered the conversation the two of them had shared in her last moments alive. It was all he could do to stop from crying. “I would - I would have promised her anything in the world if it would have kept her alive for just that much longer.”

“ _Mark_.”

“ _Izzie_.”

“We both loved someone who died.”

“ _Love_ ,” he corrected her. It was an automatic gut instinct to still think of Lexie in the present tense. After all, his feelings about her had not changed. “I still love her.” For him, it had been the first time since his last conversation with her that he had managed to say those words.

“I know,” she said, because there was nothing more she could say. For Mark, the scars were so much more fresh than they were for her. Anything she could say to try to sympathize with his situation would come across as trite and stock sentimental, like the sentiments on dime store greeting cards: “deepest sympathy” or “your loved one will be missed.” There would be nothing that she could do that would do anything to help in his situation. “I know. I do too.” It was difficult for her to admit that she was still in love with George. All this time, and her feelings had not changed. She could remember what their problems were, and why they had broken up in the first place, but - she was able to look past it, with newfound clarity borne of time marching on. There had been something there, and they had let it go by them - she had gone and married Alex, and George died. That was all there was to it.

She walked the short distance from the couch to the easy chair and wrapped her arms around him in a tentative hug; in turn, he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. The tears he had tried to hold at bay for the duration of their conversation spilled out, and they stained the side of her t-shirt with wet splotches as they held each other. Murmured, half-unintelligible statements poured out from both their mouths.

The flood gates of emotion had been opened, and they could never be properly closed again.

* * *

Izzie awoke early one morning; the sun had not yet risen, so no light came from outside the window; without the sunlight pouring through, her bedroom was on the darker side. Her room felt as though someone had turned on the air conditioner full-blast overnight, and she pulled the top blanket tighter and closer around herself. She needed the additional warmth that it provided. Ten pages. She would read ten pages from the book she was reading, and then try to go back to sleep. Her alarm would not go off for a couple more hours, anyway. Reaching to turn on the lamp light next to her bed, she began to plan out her day off: read for a bit, go grocery shopping, maybe do a load of laundry.

As the lamp light illuminated the room, she saw a ghoulish display on the wall across from her bed. Written on the wall, in what appeared to be smudged, pastel pink marker, were two words that sent a chill down her spine: _help us_. Any thoughts of anything else were forgotten in a flash. She got out of bed, with shaky, unsteady legs, and walked on the tips of her toes across the room to touch the wall. It almost did not look real. It almost looked like someone had projected the image to her.

Upon further examination, laying at the base of the wall was one of her lipstick tubes - a somewhat new one she had not had the chance to use more than once or twice - and now, she did not even have to touch the letters to realize what the writing implement used was. It was clear as day now. “Help us,” she echoed, murmuring under her breath. “Help us - with _what_ , though?”

The response came as a cool rush against her side, and a faint whisper from a familiar voice she never thought she would hear again in a thousand lifetimes said, “ _to live_.”

And then she looked to her side, almost like instinct, and saw a figure standing beside her, standing there like he had stood there so many times before. Yet, the figure should not be standing there, because - because it was _George_. Even though she had seen him before, every time was a new and startling experience, because every time was so unexpected and unpredictable as to when it would happen. “George,” she whispered, exhaling as she said his name. “Who’s us? What are you -” She reached out to touch him, and as she did so, he began to fade away into transparent wisps and tendrils, filtering upward toward the ceiling. “Don’t go!” she called out, almost hysterical as she did so. “Stay! Please! Stay! _George_!” It was the first time she had heard his voice since the last time they had seen each other, so many years before, and she wanted him to stay. She wanted to hear his voice again.

“Help Lexie and -” he said, his voice trailing off as he disappeared, leaving behind nothing but an uneasy feeling and a rush of cold, crisp air.

“Help Lexie?” she whispered to herself, wrapping herself in her blanket, tears sliding down her face. Reading her book could wait, it would not be going anywhere any time soon. “Help Lexie and - what? What can I do?” She turned over in bed and buried her face into her pillow. When morning came - when the sunrise came, she amended - she would call Mark. He would be the first person who would want to join the fight to help or save Lexie - and if it meant saving George alongside her, then she was more than all for it. “Of course, of course - I’ll - I’ll do it,” she said, stammering as she slid under the covers and prayed for sunrise to come sooner rather than later.

* * *

_Ring. Ring_.

Mark turned over in bed and looked at the clock next to his bed. 8:24. On a normal day, he never slept this late, but things had not been normal for quite some time. And also on a normal day, people did not call him this time of morning except for telemarketers and wrong numbers. Looking at his phone, however, Izzie's number was visible on the screen. Good. He did not want to have to do his patented telemarketer-scaring tactics today. “‘lo,” he muttered into the phone.

“Oh, thank God. Mark.” Her voice was urgent on the other end, and for a moment, he thought that something was wrong with her. Like maybe her tumor that she had talked about came back, or maybe she had some really bad news about something or another. And then she continued, saying, “I had a visitor last night.”

“Don’t tell me a stray cat came through your window. Or a stray Alex, for that matter.”

Izzie laughed, before clearing her throat and settling down. “No, although you _do_ know them. I can’t say I was particularly expecting them to come last night though.”

His breath caught in his throat. Could it be? But why would she visit Izzie and not him? “Was it - was it Lexie?” After the first time when he had seen her, his thoughts had been filled of nothing else. The thought of Lexie’s ghost haunting him haunted him, in a figurative sense in comparison to her literal haunting. Not that it had been a malicious sighting. It was not like in the horror movies when plates spun out of racks and chandeliers crashed to the floor, but it was still unsettling and his heart ached to tell her that she did not have to watch after him. Even though, if he was honest, she either did or felt like she did, and he was never going to say anything to stop it. If that was what she wanted to spend eternity doing -

“No,” she said, cutting off his inner monologue, and it sounded like she was frowning on the other end of the line. Or if she was not, she was about to start. “But it was about her.” After a brief pause, in which a thousand, million hypothetical situations crossed through Mark’s head, she continued. “I - I think I need to come over, because I’m going to sound crazy if I tell you on the phone, and if I tell you in person, then you’ll be more likely to believe me.”

“Uh - sure? I guess?” Confusion ran rampant for him,. If it was about Lexie somehow, and Lexie was involved, then why would she sound crazy saying it over the phone? “Who was it though?”

“I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

“ _Izzie_ -”

“George. It was George.” And then the phone went dead, and Mark lay there. She had talked about seeing George before, and before he had seen Lexie, he would never have allowed himself to believe every word of what she was saying. There was always the sense of scientific doubt in the back of his mind, regarding the supernatural and anything to do with it. Now, things had changed though, and his beliefs had shifted and flipped in accordance with the changes. He believed what Izzie was saying, because he was experiencing it too.

The question that pushed to the forefront of his mind, however, was a very simple and stark one: what did George’s visit to Izzie have _anything_ to do with him or Lexie? As far as he knew, George was concerned with George, and Lexie was concerned with Lexie, and never shall the two strands ever meet.

* * *

“So he’s standing there next to me, and he tells me to help Lexie and then he disappears before he can finish his sentence,” Izzie said, sniffling as she sipped at a cup of tea. “I don’t know if he wants us to help everyone to live again, or what.”

“You said us, right? That he wrote help _us_?”

She nodded and handed him the lipstick tube from inside her purse. “I would have taken a picture if I realized - but I was scared and panicking -”

“No, no, it’s okay,” he said, taking the tube and rolling it over in his hands. “I believe you.” He looked at the lipstick; it almost appeared as though someone had shoved the tip of it against something and bludgeoned the lipstick into some sort of assault weapon. Tracing the letters in the air with the tube, he frowned. At least it was much better and more sanitary than blood, or whatever it was that ghosts tended to use in horror movies to write with. “What do you think he means by it?”

“I think he wants us to help him and Lexie - or whoever - to live again. That much is pretty obvious,” she said. “But - but _how_? You can’t just resurrect people once they don’t have a heartbeat anymore. There’s being brain dead, and then there’s, you know, being clinically dead with no chance of coming back ever. You can’t just bring someone back when they’re already gone.”

“I know.” He would have given anything to have that be the case once upon a time, or even right now.

The expression on her face changed suddenly, and she appeared to be stricken by a deep, plaguing thought. “What if my Denny hallucinations _weren’t_ necessarily related to my tumor? What if he was haunting me like George is now? Maybe - maybe I was so desperate to have Denny back, because I had already screwed up any chance I had with George, and Alex and I were a ticking time bomb waiting to explode - and I never got the chance, really, to do anything to fuck my relationship up with Denny, since he died before it truly got off the ground. Maybe - maybe I just hallucinated the sex?”

“And so - what are you saying?”

“I don’t want to be so desperate to have George back too that I start hallucinating that we’re having sex like I did with Denny. That would permanently damage _everything_ I ever felt for him.”

Mark nodded. He could understand the desire to help the ones that they loved, but he was not sure if messing with the whole life and death thing was the wisest thing to do. In spite of all that he thought about the sanctity of death and his reluctance to mess with the natural order of things, he did not care. Lexie was worth risking it all for. “I can’t say I’ve ever imagined that I’ve had sex with a dead person, except for in my dreams. But, I see - and I agree - and I think that we should help them. Lexie and George need us. You know where we should go to figure out where to help them?”

“A shrink, maybe?”

“No. Maybe later though. Come on,” he said, dragging her to her feet. “We’re going to the library. There’s got to be something there that can help us.”

“And I thought that people these days only used the Internet for research and had all but forgotten about the library,” she mumbled under her breath as they walked out of his place down to her car. “Whatever you say, though.”

* * *

The Seattle Library was a glass-encased building that almost looked like a greenhouse, or at least Izzie thought as much as they walked in from outside. “Where do you think they keep the books that would actually help us out?” she asked, squinting her eyes. For a library, it was bright and cheerful, a modernized version of what it was she had been expecting. In the back of her mind, a library was still dusty and included mazes of stacks to get lost in. “I don’t think they have a special collection set aside for how to help those in the afterlife. Maybe they would in the psych section?”

It had been a while since the last time Mark had been anywhere that in any way resembled a public gathering place. Well, besides a hospital. “I have an idea,” he said, rolling his eyes at Izzie’s insistence on going to the psych section and dragging her over to the librarian’s desk. “Hi,” he said, plastering on his most genuine smile and aiming it at the librarian behind the counter. “Can you show us where the special collection archives are?”

The librarian looked over at them, and then back at her computer screen, before sighing and saying, “come with me, then.” With a flick of her wrist, she grabbed a set of keys and nodded at Mark and Izzie to follow her.The three of them walked through stacks and stacks of books, almost zig-zagging back and forth before the librarian slowed to a screeching halt. “Right here,” she said, gesturing to a room filled with books and maps. “Every collection that we have available for public use, right here.”

“What about the ones that _aren’t_ available?” Izzie asked. “The ones that maybe - that maybe people don’t tend to ask about?”

“If we don’t have it available in here, then we either just got it in and haven’t processed it yet, or we don’t have it at all, period, end of discussion,” she said in reply. “Enjoy.” She turned the key in the lock and the door swung open.

“After you,” Mark said, propping the door open with his foot. It was time for them to get down to business and stop the joking around.

A hour or two later, Izzie looked up from an antique map of old-town Seattle and pinched her nose to massage her eyelids. “Are you finding anything yet?” she asked. “Because the only evidence I’ve found that there’s _ever_ been anything supernatural here in Seattle are the reports of ghosts in the Pike Place Market, and that - that’s not going to help us _at all_ , unless you want to go shopping and get a good bargain on white sheets and chains.”

“No, I haven’t found anything yet,” he said, acting somewhat distracted as he flicked through the pages of an old book, “and, also, no, I _don’t_ want to go shopping, or deal with the tourists that flock around the Market. But I’m going to keep looking, and so should you.”

She grabbed another book from the pile before them, and cracked open the cover. “I don’t blame you,” she murmured. They were on an one-track path to find answers, not be distracted by other wayward paths, no matter how enticing the current idea of standing up and walking around the room was. Let alone the thought of grabbing a fresh coffee from the coffee place nearby or getting fresh air. They could do all of that, and more, when they had found what they were looking for. But research was so _dull_ , and when they were not finding anything remotely helpful, it made it ten times worse.

More time elapsed. Izzie could not even be sure what time it was anymore, but all she knew was that her stomach was beginning to ache a dull ache from hunger, and she was craving something to eat. There was a sandwich place not that far from the library - she had seen it on the drive in - and she was beginning to want to run and grab one. That, and she wanted to claw out her own eyes from how _bored_ she was. She now knew the history of Seattle through the eyes of those who accomplished it, and she now had a pretty good idea about the greater impact those people had had on American history as a whole. But this was not supposed to be a history lesson, and history had never been her best subject in school in the first place - reasons she had become a surgeon and not a historian. This expedition was supposed to be finding out what they could about the afterlife, or something that could help. Every now and then, a little bit of something would peek through, indicating that there was something just below the surface of what the author was writing about, something that alluded to the existence of ghosts - strange occurrences and the like. The million dollar question was, could she pinpoint it and find where it was elaborated on? Worst case scenario was that she would run and search out books that talked about more specifics on the afterlife, but would a library even have something that obtuse and obscure in the general collection?

And then, without warning, Mark raised his voice to just below a fever pitch, and grinned. “This woman!” Mark exclaimed, his hands flying and flailing in a million different directions as he spoke. He jabbed his finger at the carefully-preserved volume of journals in front of him and continued, “She says that she saw the spirit of her dead husband reflected in a well along the side of their property.”

“Someone actually wrote _that_?” Her interest was piqued by this sudden turn of events. Maybe this could be the break they had been looking for?

“Yeah.” He flipped over the volume and looked at the labeling affixed along the side. “Some woman named Daisy Colton.” That was strange, he thought, but did not vocalize the thought out loud to Izzie. He did not remember this journal being the next one in his stack, let alone being in his stack at all. It was not that he did not like the possibility that he had cut down on their research time by quite a bit; it was more that he was confused as to where the book came from in the first place. The sound of light laughter filled his ears, and he shook his head. It was clear as day to him: he was going more than a little insane. Maybe it was hunger.

“Does she say anything else?”

“Let me see if I can find anything,” he said, flipping through the pages. “She writes a _lot_ about her young son.” He wrinkled his nose. “I think I now know more about Lester Colton’s temper tantrums than I do on how to do a facial reconstruction.” Continuing to flip through the pages, he nodded his head on occasion, and said, “she says that she saw him from time to time, but she doesn’t tend to go into specifics. ‘Charlie visited me again yesterday evening,’ she wrote on April 13. But that’s about it. It’s mostly things like that.”

Izzie felt her tentative smile deflate into a frown, and she pushed aside her collection of letters from a formerly-prominent Seattle businessman. “I - I thought that maybe you had something there,” she said, rocking her face forward into the palm of her hand and moping. “If I wanted to read about business deals and bargains and stock prices of the 1920s, I’d open up a book about it and read it from there.”

Mark began skimming his finger down one of the pages, and said, with a hushed tone of potential excitement, “I take that back.”

“Oh?” Maybe this time this woman’s diary would not be a disappointment to her. “Did she say something more interesting this time?”

“Yes. Yes. Very much more interesting,” he said, as he cleared his throat to begin to read. She leaned forward, looking up at him with an expectant gaze as he started to read aloud: “ _May 24, 1892. Yesterday evening, just as the sun set for the evening, I went out to fetch water from the well. When I arrived, Charlie was standing there, looking down into the well. Oh! He looked so much like his_ _old_ _self. I ached to reach out and touch him, but alas! He turned to me, and called out my name: Daisy! before disappearing. I set my bucket on the ground and cried out for him. I wept into my apron. Oh, I miss him so._ ” He paused, and took a deep breath. “There’s more to it still.”

Izzie could only respond by nodding. Her thoughts were enraptured with the idea that maybe they had found a compatriot from a former time. Someone who could understand the situation they found themselves in, and could maybe give them advice on what to do now. “Go on,” she said, breathing out the words in a shallow husk.

“ _When I awoke this morning, Charlie stood at the foot of my bed. His arm was extended so far as to touch the tips of the blanket, and his finger was extended to point at my face. He then uttered the one word I never heard him say in all our years together, ‘please.’ I wanted to weep. How many times I wished he could have only said that to me when he was alive! Oh, how my heart ached. And then he followed it up with the one word that mystifies me even as I write, ‘help.’ I do not know what I can do to help him, but when I sought to protest, he only repeated it before disappearing as he had at the well earlier in the night. I will leave Lester with Aunt Greta and go into the city today to attempt to find answers. It is all I can do for Charlie now._ ”

Izzie wiped at her eyes with the back of her palm, and asked the only question that she could formulate in her mind. There were so many things that she could think about now, and the only one that she could articulate was, “did she ever get her answers she was looking for?”

Mark was silent as he read further down the pages, before looking up at Izzie with a small smile on his face. “Oh my God. Yes,” he said, as he struggled to be able to contain his excitement, “yes, she apparently did. Yes.” He started to read from the journal once again: “ _May 28, 1892. I cannot explain what has happened since the last time I wrote in here. I cannot, for if I do, I fear I may be sent to the asylum, and Charlie’s parents will take Lester away. Charlie is back. He is here, and_ _he is as alive as he ever was!_ ”

“But - _how_?” If she had not been resting her chin into the palm of her hand, her jaw would be scraping the table after hearing what he said. Yes, George had said that they wanted help in order to live again, but she never imagined that it was even possible in their most wild of dreams. And yet, this woman and her diary seemed to indicate otherwise - that she managed to find a way to reclaim the love of her life from what seemed to be an impossible and impenetrable situation.

“If you’d let me finish reading the entry, she explains it. Well, some of it, anyway,” he said, chuckling under his breath as he continued reading: “ _When I went into the city, I asked around. Respectable country women such as myself do not tend to seek out the services of those who can contact the other side, however, when one is desperate, one seeks answers from anywhere they can find them. Almost as soon as I started my search, I was recommended to the services of one Miss Maggie. Her advertisements evidently suggest that she has special abilities regarding those who have passed on before. Her shop is nestled between a haberdasher and a charcuterie, but you would not know it was there if you did not already know to look for it. I have passed by it many times before, on previous trips, without once realizing it._ ”

“ _When I walked in, I felt as though I had stepped into a foreign market, such as in Constantinople or one of the cities I have only read about in books. There were so many exotic items in there, I could not fathom them even existing, let alone what use one would find for them! Miss Maggie herself sat perched on a small stool. ‘What is it that you seek?’ she asked me, and I felt my throat grow closed._ ”

“ _Oh, how could I admit it to her, that I was frightened and seeking refuge for my heart in her tiny shop? I finally screwed my courage and said, ‘My husband died in an accident last year.’ It is the truth, although I have not talked about Charlie’s death very often to anyone. After he died, it was as if I said anything, then it would be all too real and I would have to face being a young widow with an infant son on my own._ ”

“ _The look on her face! ‘So you wish to contact him?’ She rose from her stool to face the shelves. ‘I have ways to conjure his spirit before you, if you so wish.’ She set a jar of bones in front of me. ‘This should help you, if that is what you seek.’”_

“ _I shook my head. ‘He has already contacted me,’ I said firmly. Oh, those bones smelled like the animals that fall in our well! It repulsed me, so I covered my nose with the palm of my hand. ‘I need to be able to help him. He wants my help.’”_

“‘ _You should have said that from the start!’ The jar of bones was taken away and put back on the shelves, and she paced back and forth, muttering things under her breath too soft for me to comprehend. ‘Do you have a hand mirror?’”_

“‘ _Yes.’ I admit that I was confused as to why she would ask that. Most women have hand mirrors these days, do they not? It is a simple luxury, and one that Charlie did not begrudge me indulging in when the money was there.”_

“‘ _This will do it then,’ she said, taking a mirror from the wall and handing it to me. ‘This is a special mirror. It will allow you to cross into the realm of the dead, if you position yourself between it and any other mirror. You must be able to turn and see your reflection in both mirrors at once. Once you have crossed over, only you will know what to do next. Good luck.’ I thanked her profusely, and purchased the mirror.”_

“ _I will never forget Miss Maggie, nor will I ever be able to repay her for her aid. Not as long as I shall live.”_

He pushed aside the journal. “There's more, but I think we can skip the Victorian-era reunion special. Suffice it to say, Miss Maggie and her magical, mystical mirror worked, or so her diary leads me to believe.”

“Did she say what she did with it?” Miss Maggie would be long dead by now, and while Izzie was certain that if they so needed to, they could find the modern-day equivalent of her, she was uncertain of how they would go about it. Besides, if there was a way -

“The mirror? It’s probably in an antique shop somewhere, if it still exists in less than a million pieces.” He scanned the remainder of the entry. “All she says here in this entry is that she nailed it to the outside of a small building on their property, so that she didn’t have to hold both of them. Maybe a shed, or a barn? I don’t know.”

“So if we can find the old Colton farm -”

“Then maybe we can -”

“And if we can’t, there has to be more than one mirror like that,” she said. “Now, I’m hungry. Can we _please_ get something to eat before I pass out from research-induced starvation? We do not need you to hunt down three ghosts all by yourself.”

He stood up from his chair and stretched his arms above his head. “Sounds like a good idea. You buying?”

“Why should _I_ have to pay?”

“You were the one suggested it, and I was the one who found the information,” he said, laughing as they walked out of the special collections area and toward the front lobby. “I think that means you should have to buy us lunch.”

As Mark and Izzie walked away, debating the merits of who should have to pay for lunch, Lexie and George stepped out from the place where they were lurking within the shadows. “Do you think Mark realized it was because of me he found that journal?” Lexie asked, flipping her hair back over her shoulder and smirking. “They weren’t going to find it without a little additional help, anyway. At least, any time soon.”

“How did you know which one to give them, anyway?”

“I have my ways,” she said, laughing in an eerie echo of the laugh she had laughed when Mark was looking at the journal. “Do you not remember my photographic memory? And how Cristina got people to call me Lexipedia because of it? As I said, I. Have. My Ways.” She sashayed her hips and looked back at George. “Come on, I think there’s people for us to go see.”

* * *

_Ring. Ring_.

It had been a few days since their library research expedition, and Izzie was getting anxious. From what she could find online, there was almost nothing that was indicative of where the Colton residence had once been, nor was there any indication that any of Daisy, Charlie or Lester ever existed. A part of here was wondering if perhaps the diary had been a hoax or a cruel prank, written as some sort of satire or commentary on the time period. “Hello?” she asked, answering the call without looking at who was calling.

“Izzie,” Mark said, his voice brimming with barely-concealed excitement, “guess what I found?”

“A winning Powerball ticket. You’re planning to take me to Hawaii with the winnings because I’m your new best friend and confidante.”

“How about you save your luau and tan fantasies for when you get George back?” he asked. “Because what I _actually_ found was information on the Colton family.”

“Oh?”

“I called in a few favors with people that I know, and managed to get approximately where their farm was located.”

“How close to exact do you mean by approximate?”

“As in, it’s not on some major road somewhere or something, and it was fairly out in the middle of nowhere even then. Apparently you can’t drive really close to there, so you drive as close as you can and then walk the remainder of the way. So it’s not the easiest place in the world to get to, I’m going to guess. Nice and quiet. But, Izzie, it exists! And we can go. It’s a couple hours outside of Seattle, but it’s not a bad drive at all, from the looks of it.”

Her ecstasy had a difficult time being contained, and she wanted to scream and shout and jump for joy. But she managed to keep herself composed for the duration of their call. “So, when do we want to go?”

“Yesterday,” came Mark’s simple reply. “The day before yesterday. Two weeks ago. The second Sunday after the Fourth of July. Or, you know, realistically, we could go tomorrow? Give us a night to prepare ourselves and get ready.”

She nodded, even though she knew he could not see it through the phone lines. “What time and where?”

“Noon at my place? Bring mirrors.”

“Sounds good.” After they said their goodbyes and she ended the call, she got up from her sitting position and did a little skip, hop and dance, shimmying her hips and screaming with excitement at the top of her lungs. This time tomorrow, they would be on their way. She touched her fingers to her lips, and then she touched the same fingers to the mirror on her wall. “I’m coming for you, George.”

She could have sworn she heard a faint voice somewhere in the distance say in reply, “thank you, Izzie.”

* * *

“Two mirrors?” Mark asked, looking down at his meticulous, hand-written notes. “One for the way over, one for the way back.”

Izzie held up two brand-new, identical hand mirrors that she had purchased at Walgreens on the way over. “Check, and check.” She shoved them inside the knapsack that Mark had thrown her as she entered the door, and looked up with expectation. “Anything else we need? Compass, directions, money, canteen of water, sunscreen, hat, matches?”

“We have directions,” he said, pushing the map over closer to her. “And that’s all we need. Let’s only take what we need, so that our load is lighter and we don’t have as much to worry about in case bands of marauding ghosts decide to raid our camp and steal anything they can get their dead little hands on.”

“I don’t think dead people need to worry about whether or not they get sunburned,” she said, “they’re already as pale as anything and can’t get any more pale. Sunscreen is a non-issue for them.” She slipped the hairbrush from inside her purse into the knapsack, and folded her purse down into a more compact shape. Something told her that the brush would come in handy, if for no other reason than she could make herself look presentable at the end of it all. “And matches? Like an inadvertent afterlife forest fire is going to kill them twice over?”

“Ready?” Mark asked, taking the map as she shrugged the knapsack over her shoulders. “This is enough. If we needed anything else, Daisy’s journal would have talked about it.”

“I’ve been ready forever,” she said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

* * *

“I’m surprised we didn’t have to sacrifice a virgin deer and douse ourselves in its blood,” Mark said, carrying the packs of supplies on his back as they walked toward the former Colton residence, as marked on their map. “Or fly to some remote part of Transylvania or something and find Dracula’s castle. You’d think some people would have respect for the horror classics.” There was a distinct odor of something rotting nearby, and Izzie covered her mouth with the back of her palm to block out the scent.

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “I would have thrown up if we’d had to take a blood shower.”

“A former surgeon, queasy with the sight of blood? That’s a surprise.”

“It’s _Bambi_ blood. There’s a reason I went to medical school and not veterinary, and it’s _not_ because I got to meet cocky plastic surgeons like you.”

“It’s because you got to meet the O’Malleys of the world. Nice, inoffensive, George O’Malley.”

She bit her lip and fought back tears. If this worked like she thought it should - they would both get what they wanted out of the deal, and then her and George could run off to the other side of the country if they wanted. No more Seattle, no more surgical calls, just her and George and a coffee shop in Poughkeepsie or some idyllic location like that. Let Lexie have all the Mark she could ever want. It was not that she did not like Mark. Over the past few weeks, she had grown to acquire a strange fondness for the guy. Working together had its advantages for that. But, at the end of the day, Lexie knew how to deal with Mark and all of his idiosyncracies, and by all appearances, she loved him for it. So, Lexie could have Mark, and she could have George, and they would all be happy. “Or because I can’t bear to see dead animals.”

“Then don’t look over there,” Mark said, waving his hand over toward an old stone well - the stones were falling apart. The carcass of some small animal perched on top of two of the stones, dangling over the side, almost ready to fall in.. “Ol’ Bugs there ate the wrong carrot. And I think this is it.” He looked down at the map, and then back up at their surroundings, and gave a brisk nod. “Yeah. There’s the shed, and there’s the well, and -” he continued looking. “- I guess that would be the house?” he asked, pointing across the well to where a burnt-out husk of a wall with a bit of foundation stood. “Or what’s left of it, anyway.”

She grimaced at the thought of what could be in the well. Poor rabbit, but that must be the infamous well that Daisy had mentioned in her diary - the one where she had seen Charlie the initial time, starting the whole ordeal in the first place. The shed was just as ramshackle as she had imagined it would be after decades of disrepair and neglect, and fastened to the outside back wall was a cracked and broken mirror - could it be the same one, after all this time? Following her line of sight, she saw the other half of the mirror lying nearby, almost buried underneath a coat of fallen leaves. Bingo. It would not have ended well if they could get over there, but not get back the same way. They were taking a risk on this being the magical mirror, and not some other mirror, but this whole thing was an adventure in risk-taking exercises.

“You ready?” she asked. The rational part of her, the one that had been trained throughout medical school about the realities of death and the one that had gotten her through her life in one intact piece still held a twinge of doubt about what they were doing. Some part of her thought that her and Mark were still abiding in some sort of a shared hallucination; they would wake up tomorrow and the only spirits were the ones in bottles and the only ghosts were in horror movies. They were taking a risk, taking it on faith alone that they were doing the right thing and not following a blind path to oblivion.

He nodded and took hold of her hand as they stepped forward into the small space between the mirrors. “It would be _so_ much easier if we were in a movie theater restroom right now,” he muttered under his breath, squeezing her fingers together in his grasp, and he muttered a few unintelligible expletives under his breath. Unbroken mirrors and clean accommodations sounded like a better way to go into the afterlife than ramshackle, makeshift things such as this. Self-consciously, he ran his hand through his hair, looking in one of the mirrors, while Izzie pursed her lips together into a wan smile and stared at her reflection - it was a split second of normalcy, before a sudden cold blast of air rushed by them.

Everything went black and cold and they were lifted off their feet and turned around, spinning in circles and flipped upside down, and the last thing Mark remembered thinking before he lost consciousness was: _this must be what it feels like to die_.

* * *

“Mark? Mark, are you alright?”

He turned his head over and looked up at the voice calling his name. For a fraction of a second, he thought it was Lexie - he hoped it was her, anyway, because then he would know it had worked and they were going to be successful with their mission. And then he squinted closer as his eyes grew accustomed to the strange lights that cast shadows on the grass where he lay, and he realized that it was not Lexie. It was Izzie. Which made a slight bit more sense anyway, everything considered. Even though the prospect of Lexie greeting him when he entered the afterlife was a much more pleasing thought. “Yeah. Will be,” he said, sitting up and looking around where they were. “Uh. Where _are_ we?”

“No idea,” she said, following his gaze as they took in where they were. It was grass they were sitting on, green grass - the color of emeralds - in an open field of some sort. The sky was dark and dreary, with a hazy sort of light source - was that the Sun, or was it something else? - hidden behind layers and layers of clouds. Back home, a field like this would have been home to any number of creepy-crawlies and other animals; here, the eerie, quiet stillness was a hallmark. Not a single sound was to be heard, except for the beating of their own hearts and the occasional quiet exhale. “I was half-expecting the River Styx or something,” she continued. “You know, like in mythology? Pay Charon his toll to use his boat to cross over?”

“It could still be around here somewhere, I guess,” he said. “Do you think it worked?”

“I can’t just pull out my cell phone and have it tell me that my GPS location is The Afterlife. I don’t think it works like that, even if I happened to have had my phone on me,” she said, rummaging in one of the bags he had carried. “But do you _think_ that this looks like we’re still in the creepy woods with the dead rabbit, the spooky shed and the burnt-out house?”

He looked taken aback slightly, as he stood up, regained his balance, and brushed flecks of grass off his clothing. “Well, I guess not.” From the new perspective, he could see more of the field they’d landed in. Gently rolling hills stretched on as far as the eye could see, with thickets of nondescript trees only just visible in the distance at the horizon line. The clouds distorted what the colors were; up close, he could tell that the grass was indeed green, but the grass far off in the distance appeared to be in various shades of grayscale. “What are you _doing_?”

“Is this the Spanish Inquisition?” she asked in retort, jamming the pointy handle end of a lavender hairbrush into the ground. “We need to remember where we entered this crazy, hazy world.”

“And your hairbrush does _what_ , exactly? It’s not going to brush your hair if it’s stuck in the ground, and I’m pretty sure that’s the main purpose of a hair. Brush,” he replied, putting extra emphasis on the last two words.

“It’s that or one of the mirrors, Dr. McLet’s-Pack-an-Obscenely-Light-Load-and-Leave-All-the-Good-Stuff-at-Home,” she said, “and I would rather _not_ risk losing our way home because of that.” She thrust the back of her hand against the head of the brush a couple more times, before standing up, brushing her hands against each other and smiling. “That will do quite nicely, I think.”

He looked down with a dubious glance at the brush, and then back up at Izzie’s proud face. If he could admit it, the hairbrush did make a good marker, and she was right - the final part of their plan could not fall flat just because they did not remember which part of which field they had landed in. Or because they misplaced a piece of a broken mystical mirror, of all things. “I think Dr. McSteamy still has a better rhythm to it.”

Izzie began to walk away, headed toward the thicket of trees - where there were trees, there had to be something on the other side of them, and that was but the first step toward finding out how long they were going to be here. “Whatever you say,” she called out behind her, laughing as she did so, “ _Dr. McSmitten_.”

“Only with Lexie,” was his reply. “I could say the same for you too, you know. With George.”

* * *

Izzie was not sure how far they had walked since they left the field, and her sense of time was already warped beyond recognition. Walking through one thicket had led to another, and then another, separated by fields that appeared identical to the first one they had seen. One thing seemed to be clear in abundance: wherever it was that they were, be it in the afterlife or somewhere else, she was not tired one bit after all the walking they had done. Fatigue was not an issue, and she was not in that amazing of shape either.

“How do we know we’re going in the right direction?” Mark asked, stopping next to a tree that stood taller than the others, as he caught up to her. “They could be anywhere. Literally.”

Shrugging her shoulders, she exhaled. The fields and thickets seemed quite endless at this point. They could be walking forever, or in circles, and not realize it. He was right. Of course he was. There was no real way to know which way they needed to go, but he looked at her with an expectant look, and so she needed to come up with a quick answer that would suffice. “Instinct?” she offered. “Or maybe the feeling in our hearts that we’re getting closer to them.”

He could only nod. Lexie. They were doing this for Lexie. And George for Izzie, but for him, the primary purpose was Lexie. “What are you feeling?”

“That we’re getting closer.” She took tentative steps in different directions, before motioning with her hand. “I think we should go this way. It _feels_ right.”

* * *

“I-Is that -”

Lexie pressed her hand to her forehead and gazed out into the distance. She could make out two forms - one appeared to be a bit taller than the other, although this perspective was aided by the shorter one being hunched over something. She thought she might know who at least one of the two figures was, but it did not make any sense. What would _he_ be doing here? And who was the person he was with? Turning back to George, she parsed what his exact reaction was in a split second: they were not reacting to the same figure. “George?” she asked, placing her hand on the top of his arm in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture. “Are you -”

“ _Izzie_.” His throat was clenched tightly, and it came across in a hoarse whisper, but there was a surety to his proclamation. Being dead for as long as he had, there was of course the occasional wisp of a blonde woman who came walking through his line of vision, but none of them - none of them were Izzie. And now, now it was her, after all this time.

A part of her, for a fraction of a second, thought that maybe she had been wrong with her identification. Maybe it was Alex, then. Maybe something had happened - they had run into each other and died in a horrible, tragic accident somehow? That could be, maybe. Death had cramped her knowledge of what was happening back at Seattle Grace-Mercy West, insofar as the gossip went. Maybe Izzie was back for some reason. And then she looked again. There was no way that was Alex. None at all. She knew who it was now, and seeing him again was _so_ much better than seeing Alex ever would have been.

If she had a heart to beat, it would be beating outside her chest. If she could breathe, she would not be able to - some things would not change, she supposed. And now, she knew how George had felt just a short time before, as she whispered one word, pressing the tips of her fingers against her bottom lip: “ _Mark_.” Of all the things in all of the world that she could have ever imagined, seeing Mark and Izzie again any time soon was not one of them. Together, even. A million questions zoomed through her mind, but the one that stuck out in constant repetition was a simple, one-word question: _why_? Why were they here? Was it because of what George had done?And how did they find them, and - she whimpered, cutting off her thought process in an instant.

Acting on instinct, George reached for her other hand and grasped it in his own, clenching her fingers as if his hand was a vise. “Lexie,” he started to say. “What am I -”

“What _are we_ ,” she corrected him. They were a ragtag team, the two of them: George and Lexie, against the world, fighting for what they thought was right. It was times like this when she wished she could cry the tears that she remembered crying so many times before. “What are we going to do?” She stroked her thumb along the curve of his wrist and whimpered again. There was no answer to the question, at least, none that would be any sort of satisfactory. All they could do was wait and see what was going to happen.

After all, they did have forever to wait. That was all they had, but it did not appear as though they were going to need to wait that long. Not now, with what was appearing on the horizon.

* * *

“Izzie,” Mark said, pointing to the top of a nearby hill. “Do you think that’s them?” He thought that he knew Lexie well enough that he felt like he could spot her from a mile away. Even now. But he was not sure. He wanted confirmation - confirmation that they were on the right track, that they had not just decided to do this entire thing on a huge lark for no real reason. Even if they had written things in lipstick on walls and asked for their help, almost begging for it. Maybe it had been all one big cosmical, supernatural misunderstanding.

“Yeah.” Her eyes misted over, and she spoke with a lump in her throat. “I-It’s them.”

She wanted to run to George. Take him into her arms, tell him that she came for him, and - and see how things went from there. And she could tell, just by looking at how Mark’s expression had changed once he spotted the duo in the distance, that at this moment, his thoughts were so very much the same as her own, except replacing George with Lexie.

For one, it was the first time she had seen a genuine smile on his face this entire time. It extended from ear to ear, and was the broadest, most fantastic sight she had seen out of him in so long.

It was not quite a run. It was not quite walking either. Whatever it _was_ that they were doing, however, it was a hastened pace to narrow the gap between the two duos. One made their way toward the hill, the other descended from it. It almost appeared as though they were gliding across the grass instead of walking on top of it. And then, in what seemed to be both an eternity and the blink of an eye all in the same moment, they came face to face.

An awkward silence ensued, as nervous glances were exchanged and thoughts were calculated to create words. Months, if not years, of memories of things that should have been said or done came to a head all in one moment. The real questions became who would act first and how.

And then, as if buoyed by a newfound sense of confidence that he had not felt as though he possessed anymore, Mark reached out for Lexie. At the feel of her skin, he almost cried out as if in ecstasy, and he ran his fingers through the tips of her hair. “You’re here,” he said, pulling her close to him, drawing his arms around her waist. “It’s really true, you’re here, you’re _here_ -” he continued, burying his face into the side of her neck and breathing her in. It had been too long, and she looked just as she had the day she - no, the last time he had seen her, except without the scars he would have expected to see. She was Lexie, and she was here, and he could not help but marvel in those facts being a reality again.

As Mark held Lexie for the first time in months, Izzie walked up to George, with tears streaming down her cheeks, and placed her palm flat against his. She was not sure - was not quite sure how he was going to react, if he wanted _her_ or if any breathing human being with quasi-superhuman patience for things like this would do the trick. Was he still interested in her? Could he still be, after all this time?

“You came,” he said. “You. Actually. Came.” Taking the hand of his that was not against Izzie’s, he rubbed his index finger along the contours of Izzie’s cheeks, tracing the tracks of her tears and trying to eliminate them now that they were now running out of control.

“I - I _told_ you,” she said, stammering out an answer between tearful shudders. “that I w-would. And we _did_. I - I don’t break m-my promises.”

“Oh, Izzie,” he whispered. “Izzie. Izz - _ie_.” The sound of her name coming from his mouth again only made the tears come faster instead of abating them in any way. “We know. _I_ know. Don’t worry. Don’t cry.” Removing his finger from her cheek, he replaced it with his lips, chasing down every last tear and kissing them away. “Izzie, don’t cry. I’m here.”

She leant into his touch, but despite all of his pleading, she could not stop the tears from falling. All of their hard work, and the uncertainty, and the emotion of seeing him again after all the time that had elapsed - she could not stop crying in relief. “You’re never, ever going near busses again. _Ever_.”

“I didn’t ever intend to. Or airplanes, for that matter.” He tilted his head to acknowledge Lexie, but continued to kiss Izzie’s face as he did so, ridding it of her tears.

“Good. Good,” she said, collapsing into him, his body supporting her as she fell.

The hard, horrible part was over. They had managed to find their way back to each other, and none of them had any intention of letting go ever again now that they were back together. Ever. Now - now it was time to head home. Wherever home for them could be anymore, given what had and had not changed.

* * *

“How often did you visit me?” Mark asked, walking hand-in-hand with Lexie ahead of George and Izzie, as they walked back toward the field where they had first entered this world. The trees were thick and obscured the sky from view, and it felt cool and misty. “Obviously, I know about at least once, maybe a few times -”

“It wasn’t quite Touched by Your Friendly Guardian Angel, but I - I may have spent more time with you than you realized.” She nudged her leg against his, and, tilting her head up to face his, she gave him a broad smile. They were together again, at last, and he was not recoiled from her touch by something stupid like her being dead and invisible and a ghost. Not anymore. “I never wanted you to think that you were alone.”

“So that was _you_? I thought that was my air conditioner going out.”

“Me. All me.” There was a brief lull, and then she continued speaking, “Well, maybe some of it was your air conditioner, but - most of it? Me. There’s not a whole lot of things to do in Seattle when you’re dead, and wandering around a hospital as a ghost is depressing as hell. Do you realize how many people haunt Seattle Grace-Mercy West because they have nowhere else to go? It’s like a convention of lost souls in there, those who searching for some higher purpose and only finding the repetition of the worst days of their lives. I couldn’t deal with it.”

“You could touch me, but I couldn’t touch you?” he asked, shifting the focus of her mini soliloquy from the grand to the minute. It was not that he did not appreciate it, but when everything was still so new and fresh again, he did not want to think about anything else if he could help it. “And just _how_ is that fair?” He detached his hand from hers and moved it to rest in the small of her back. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to touch you again, Lex, and -”

“And what’s stopping you, then?” she replied, tilting her head and quirking one eyebrow up, catching his gaze in her own. “Those two are on their own planet of delirious happiness right now. I don’t think they’d notice if a - _no_. Trains are about the one form of transit that haven’t caused any of us any grief so far - so, uh, I don’t think they’d notice if the two of us, you know, went off -”

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, lowering his voice to a sharp growl and looking her up and down. She was still as beautiful as she had always been, still his beautiful Lexie. “I _want_ to, you know I do, more than anything right now, but I don’t want our company back there,” he gestured to the couple walking behind them, “to be a witness to what I do to you when we’re alone together.” He slid his hand up her back and massaged at her shoulder blades, relishing in the feel of her skin and bones and muscles beneath his touch - feeling so - so _alive_. It was a miracle, a modern-day, indescribable miracle. Leaning down to press his lips to the base of her ear, he kissed the side of her face. “That? Is just a preview for later.”

“If we’re doing previews for later,” she said in reply, “then _this_ -” she lifted her shirt an inch or two, exposing the barest hint of hidden skin to his hungry gaze, “is what you can expect, when we’re alone.” Swishing her hips from side to side and strutting forward with a bounce in her step, she turned back to face him and grinned at the slack-jawed expression she found on his face. “Cat got your tongue?”

It had been too damn long since the last time he had seen this side of Lexie - the playful, fun, sexy side of the most complex and loving person he knew, instead of the moping, lovesick, brooding side that he had seen throughout the entire duration of his relationship with Julia. And yet, even though Julia had been a major part of his life, up until right before that fateful day - she could not be a further, more distant thought at this moment. His primary objective was to get the four of them home safe and sound. That much was paramount, and not just for any selfish reasons he may have had. Secondary? To let Lexie back into his life, for good this time, and if that meant dealing with their physical attraction first off, then - then he would be fine with that. “No,” he said, finally, “I just can’t believe that we’re going to get another chance. And I’m going to make it up to you. All of it.”

“We both have making up to do,” she said, choosing her words and tone with care in order to better seduce the man standing before her. Her eyes flickered with lust as she pranced back to his side and crooked one finger under his chin, hooking it with her grasp. “And we’re going to enjoy every last minute of it.”

“Damn right we are,” he muttered, clasping Lexie close to his side as they continued to walk. The faster they got out of here, the faster they could stop teasing and taunting each other.

Meanwhile, Izzie rested her head on George’s shoulder as they walked behind Mark and Lexie; she kept looking up at him, and then back down at the ground, laughing and smiling about being back together again. Their laughter echoed through the trees, until George leaned his head to rest on the top of her head. It dissipated in an instant as he asked, in a quiet, low whisper, “I thought you were still in love with Alex?”

Her heart broke when she heard the palpable sadness in his voice. “What? No,” she said, soft and firm, “I loved him once, twice, a long time ago, maybe, yes. Not now, though. Haven’t for a while.”

“What changed, then? Before I died, you two - there was the divorce, but that was after -”

“Alex and I were no longer the same people we started out as, and - and I had realized what I had lost along the way.” She examined the profile of his face as she tried to ascertain what the best way to broach the subject was. “I’d lost you. You were - you were _gone_ , George, and I knew that I could never be the same person I had been since moving to Seattle without your presence in my life.”

“I never left you, though! I was your Casper, remember? At least, that’s what you called me, when you didn’t think anyone was around to hear you. I heard you. I was there.”

“I didn’t know that it was you, not until recently. That’s the thing! I couldn’t call up my best friend to get a firm reality check on the Alex situation, because my best friend was dead. I couldn’t get a comforting word from you, because you had to go off and try to be a hero, and as much as I love you for saving that woman’s life, you - you left me alone to face a world without you in it.” She felt the feeling of tears welling up inside; sniffling, she tried to abate the feeling. There had already been enough tears and crying for one day. There didn’t need to be additional ones from her, not now. “I loved Alex,” she said, burying the words into George’s shoulder. “But you were such a big part of me that I can’t - _I can’t_ -”

“You can,” he said, “I _know_ you can, because you’re Izzie Stevens and I believe in you. You’ve changed some, but we all have. You’re still the same Izzie I knew back when we were new interns, deep inside. You can do whatever it is that you want. Just - if you ever, for whatever reason, decide go back to Alex again - please let me know. Let me know, so that I can dig the knife out from my heart.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, all this time,” Izzie replied. She moved her hand over to touch his chest, touch the place where his heart was. She wanted to cover it and protect it from any harm that could befall it ever again. “I don’t want to go back to Alex. Ever. I don’t love him. Not anymore. George, it’s you. You’re the best of me and it’s _you_ that I love. You.”

“It’s me?”

“How many people would I have spent hours researching in obscure collections in the public library for? How many people would I have rescued from a place like _this_? How many people would I -” she dropped her voice and tilted her face to face George’s. “Would I have risked _so much_ for just to bring them back into my life? How many people would I have voluntarily spent hours upon _hours_ with Mark Sloan, of all people, outside of a hospital for? It’s you, George. All of them - it’s _you_. It’s only you, and as far as I’m concerned, it always will be just you, and it has been for a long while now, and if you can’t see that -”

“I think the voluntarily spending time with Mark part is the most telltale part of that for me,” he said, as a smile spread across his face at her declaration. “Not every guy can say they have someone like you in their life. Someone who would go this far for - for someone like me. I’m a George, not a Mark.”

She shrugged her shoulders and pressed a smile into the side of his neck. “What can I say? I’m determined. Maybe a little crazy, but a lot determined too. And I like that you’re a George and not a Mark. Love it, in fact.”

“You’re not crazy. Determined, yes, you definitely are, and I appreciate it - so, _so_ much more than you’ll ever be able to realize.” He caressed the side of her arm as he spoke. “You saved my life, Izzie. You and Mark saved my life and that’s not something that someone can forget very easily. Not that I’d _want_ to forget, honestly. I want to spend the rest of your life remembering everything that you have done for me.”

“It was worth it,” she stated, a blush spreading over her cheeks. It appeared as though there was a rosy future ahead for the two of them.

* * *

“There it is!” Izzie called out some time later. Sticking up out of the ground was a very familiar lavender hairbrush, still in the same condition Izzie had left it in however long ago they had left it behind. “We’re here.”

“I was beginning to think we had gotten lost somewhere along the way,” Mark said, grumbling under his breath. “Things didn’t look like I had remembered them from before.”

Lexie and George exchanged knowing glances. “Uh, Mark?” Lexie asked, her voice dripping with saccharine sweetness as she looked over at him. “I think the reason you’re remembering things differently this time around is because you were preoccupied with staring at me the whole way back. After all, I am not a tree.”

“I would _never_ stare at you the whole way back!” Mark said. He was indignant that she would accuse him of such a preposterous thing. At the quizzical expression on Lexie’s face, he broke down into laughter. “No, no, of course I would. You’re right.” He paused, allowing the faintest edges of a smirk to emerge before continuing, “besides, I’m _so_ happy you’re not a tree. The things I want to do to you right now would be probably considered environmental hazards if I did them to some innocent tree somewhere.” He walked over to Lexie and took her hand in his.

“A- _hem_ ,” Izzie said, clearing her throat and breaking into Mark’s rambling. She held aloft the other half of the broken mirror and the other mirror they had brought from home in one hand, along with the empty knapsack in the other. “Hairbrush. Mirrors. It’s time to go. Let’s leave this all behind, lovebirds. This place gives me the creeps.”

“We could say the same for you two,” Lexie said, clinging close to Mark, looking up at him and smiling. “I don’t think you two have taken your eyes off each other since - since we got back together.”

“I wouldn’t say that if I were you,” George said. “Mainly because you aren’t that innocent yourself in that area, Lexie. I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at Mark. You can’t look away.”

“Damn right she can’t,” Mark said, flexing his muscles. “I think we’re all a little lovestruck right now though. Understandably so, too. Cupid’s ghost has been working his ass off for us today with those arrows of his.”

They all nodded in unison. Mark took the hand mirror, while Izzie kept her hold on the shard from the other mirror. He held it high enough where all four of their reflections were displayed, and Izzie did the same with hers, creating the desired effect instantaneously. George took Izzie’s hand and clasped it over his chest over where his heart would be; Mark held Lexie’s waist tight and looked over into the mirror as a warm, mild wind blew past them. A bright light shone and covered the foursome as they twisted and turned and moved around in the sky. And Lexie thought to herself before everything turned to a pure, brilliant shade of white: _this must be what it feels like to be born_.

* * *

_Thud_.

Lexie looked up from her position on the cold, hard dirt to see the sun shining bright straight above her. “Ow!” she exclaimed. Her back was killing her for some inexplicable reason, and there was some sort of a bug crawling along the side of her thigh. Birds chirped a merry song somewhere above her. “What -” And then she tried to stand on her legs, wobbling as she did so - balance was a different concept again. She brushed at the dirt on her pants, watching as it showered off in a spectacular array. Looking around, however, there was no sign of anyone else around her. She called out in a frail, almost frantic voice, “Mark? Mark, where are you?” If something had happened to him - and he was still on the other side of the mirrors, stuck in the horrific limbo where she had been held captive for so long herself - she would never forgive herself, even if it took her a thousand lifetimes.

“Right here,” he said, his voice coming from the other side of the well. He stood up, and Lexie ran over to him. “I’m right here,” he murmured. “I didn’t leave you, my Lexie. Nothing happened to me.” He wrapped his arms around her neck and kissed the tip of her nose, followed by moving his lips over hers and kissing her with soft and tender precision. “We’re safe now. No one - or nothing - can ever harm us again. I promise you that.”

She nodded, burying her face in his shoulder and sniffling. “I was scared - I was afraid that something had happened - and that I’d have to go back into my own personal hell to save you like you saved me.”

“No, no,” he said, scattering small kisses onto the crown of her head, “you don’t have to do that. We’re going home, and you don’t have to worry anymore.”

Izzie rose from where she had landed in a pile of leaves, and George stumbled over from somewhere near the house’s foundation. The foursome turned to look at each other, and then Izzie looked down at the knapsack. “Uh, Mark?” she asked. “Did we - what happened to the car keys? They weren’t in here when we - there’s only the hairbrush and -”

“Fuck. I put them in my pocket when we came out here in the first place,” he said, digging through his pockets and turning them inside-out. Nothing. “But I don’t remember feeling them after that at all.”

Lexie dropped to the ground and started sifting through leaves; a minute or two later, George joined her, and then, in short order, all four of them were crawling around on the forest floor. “Where were you?” she asked.

“Right around where you are searching,” he said, “but I guess we get thrown around so much by the process that they could be just about anywhere, if they’re even _here_ and not somewhere in the vortex of time and space.”

She nodded and scattered leaves with the palm of her hand. It was going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack, except it was keys in a forest. Right around now was when she wished that she had a large magnet to poke at things.

The search went on for some time, before George held his hand aloft in the air. Dangling from his index finger was a set of keys on a key ring. “Is this it?” he asked. “Or do I need to keep looking?”

Mark looked up from where he was looking. “Yes!” he exclaimed with a sense of relief. “That’s it!”

At Mark’s acknowledgment of the finding, Izzie crawled over toward George and grabbed him in an ecstatic hug. “My hero!” she said. “Let’s go. Now. I’m tired of being out here.”

“So am I,” Lexie said, as they began the walk back to Mark’s car. “Like you wouldn’t even begin to believe.” And George could only just nod in muted acknowledgment. What Lexie was feeling, he could feel to an amplified degree. At last, he was going home, though not to his own. As well, he would not be alone this time, or perhaps, ever again.

* * *

An hour or two later, Mark pulled up outside his place and stopped the car, allowing for the four to get out. They stood around outside the car and gave each other anxious smiles as they dug their hands along their sides. “This is where we part ways,” George said, looking over at Izzie with his eyes gleaming. “I guess?”

Izzie pointed to her car a few spaces over. “Well, my car’s right there, so once Mark goes in and -”

“I actually locked your keys in the glove compartment,” he said. “So, they’re right there for whenever you want to take them.”

She took the keys from inside his car and clasped them inside her hand. The four continued to stand around. Lexie scuffed the heel of her shoe against the pavement, and George hummed the first few bars to a somewhat familiar song. Izzie tapped her foot on the tire of Mark’s car and, at the same time, rubbed her hands together. Mark began twiddling his thumbs. And then he looked down at what he was doing. “I’m actually fucking twiddling my thumbs. What the hell am I doing?” he asked. When he got no reply, he said, “So, uh, it’s getting close to dinnertime,” he said, “and I kind of wanted to do something with Lexie soon? Maybe get some takeout or something, and, uh, I think you two probably want to be doing something about dinner here soon too?”

Izzie nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good. So, uh -” she said, turning to Mark and Lexie, “I guess this is goodbye?”

“For good?” Lexie asked, looking at George. It would be difficult to say goodbye forever to someone with whom she had shared such a profound experience. There probably was not a support group anywhere for Former Dead People of America, let alone the possibility that she would ever meet anyone else in her new lifetime who had similar experiences to hers. Maybe she could check out the near death experiences groups. That could work, with a little fudging here and there.

“There’s not much holding me to Seattle anymore, and there’s even less now that George is back in my life like this,” Izzie said, smiling over at George, “but, you know, we’ll see. No promises. George and I have a lot of talking and deliberating to do about this. We’ll let you know if we decide to move to Poughkeepsie and start a bakery.”

“I think this merits you a place on the Christmas card list for the rest of your life, at the very least. Mark and I can keep you two updated on our lives, and you two can keep us updated on yours, and -” Lexie cut off her ramble there. No need to scare off the nice woman who saved her life. “So, uh, goodbye, you two.” She embraced both Izzie and George, and they returned the embrace. “Drive safely, have a good life, and if you two ever either have a daughter or adopt one, Alexandra is a perfectly lovely name.” She laughed. “Only kidding on the last part, of course. Unless you want to. Then feel free.”

Izzie joined in the laughter and walked over to Mark. “It’s been fun,” she said, extending her hand for a handshake, before he pulled her into an affectionate hug. “All those freaked out phone calls and hours researching and traveling and - let’s not do this again any time soon, okay?”

“I don’t plan on it,” Mark said. “I only had one person I wanted to get back from the dead, and she’s right here.”

“Same,” she replied, gesturing to George. “Once is enough for me.”

George and Mark shook hands - “it’s been good” - but most everything that needed to be said had already been said, and there was no need to reiterate what had only just been said. It was time to move onward and upward. Izzie and George got inside her car and waved forlornly to the couple standing outside as the engine started up.

“So, which foreign cuisine would you like to have delivered to our doorstep tonight?” Mark asked as George and Izzie sped away into the distance. “I have menus for, uh, just about every one you can think of. And maybe even some that you can’t.”

“Thai sounds _amazing_ ,” Lexie said. “Do you have a menu for it?”

“Tonight is all about you, Lexie,” he replied, guiding her toward his place, “so if you want Thai food for dinner, I swear, I'd take you to Bangkok if I could. See how the natives do it. In lieu of that, I have two or three Thai menus we can choose from.”

“Maybe you can take me to Bangkok eventually,” she said, winking at him, “but for tonight, I think I just want to stay in and enjoy you and your company.”

“Good.”

* * *

Mark threw the takeout box from the Thai restaurant around the corner against the wall and smiled as it ricocheted and landed right side up in the middle of his rug. “How did it feel to eat real food again?” he asked, swallowing a bite of the por pia tod and grinning. “As opposed to - do ghosts even need to eat? What _would_ ghosts eat?”

She laughed and took another spoonful of pad preow wan from the dish in front of them. “No, not really. Did you ever wonder why some dead people like to haunt restaurants?”

“No? I thought it was because they died there or had some unfinished business or whatever reason anyone has for deciding to haunt the everliving fuck out of another person.”

“It’s because,” she said, eating a bite before setting down her spoon and facing him, “when you have an eternity to just kind of do whatever it is that you want to do whenever you feel like it, you tend toward doing what you miss most from life. Athletes and sports nuts haunt stadiums. People who like food, or chefs, haunt restaurants. Things like that. They can’t eat the food themselves, but they can live vicariously through the people who do. Or, you know, some torment the diners by throwing their spaghetti and meatballs against the wall, but whatever gets you through time.”

“And you? You were a surgeon. I mean, you told me that you hated seeing all the trapped souls at Seattle Grace-Mercy West, but I would think that you’d miss being a doctor, and could find some out of the way operating room to make your little haunted home. You did a lot of good with your life. Think of how many lives you’ve saved over the years.”

“I missed you more, though, than I missed being a doctor,” she stated, burying her spoon inside the pad preow wan and frowning. “I never wanted to leave your side, but I didn’t want you to think you had a creepy stalker that, oh, it just so happened that you couldn’t see. So I spent quite a bit of time with George too.”

“I hope you didn’t fall in love with him. All that time you spent with him, alone -” He did not think that Lexie would have gone back to him with such ease and willingness if she was in a passionate, torrid love affair with George, but he had to make sure. Just in case. Besides, was there not likely some policy about what happened in the afterlife stayed there? He was not sure if being a ghost operated something like an impromptu trip to Las Vegas would.

“I only have eyes for you,” she said. “No one else. We’re meant to be, remember? Soulmates, Mark. _Soulmates_. And even if I wanted George, which I’ll repeat, I do _not_ \- he’s head over heels in love with Izzie. I love you, Mark, no one else.” She stood up and looked down at Mark still sitting on the couch. “I think I’m going to go take a shower,” she continued, “so, uh, whenever you’re done eating -” She lifted her shirt above her head and gave him a coy smile as it dropped to the floor. “That’s where I’ll be.”

“Is that an invitation?” he asked. His breathing was shallow and deep. The thought of Lexie in the shower - _his_ shower - rediscovering the joys of American plumbing prowess and the simple splendor of taking a shower was almost too much to bear, but he was managing to keep his libido in check. For now. There would be no guarantees if she made him hold out.

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” she said, kicking her shirt over into the corner and out of the way of foot traffic. It was almost too easy for her to rile him up like this, to make him a little crazy for her. But she was enjoying every second of it. That was what he got for his random and unnecessary jealousy over George. “ _Me_? I’m just taking a shower. I haven’t had one in such a long time, after all. But you? You can do whatever it is you want to do, and I’m not going to be the one to stop you.”

As she swished and pranced out of the room, flipping her hair back over one shoulder as she did so, Mark put his spoon down. The jasmine rice could grow cold for all he cared; the spring rolls could go into summer or autumn, and what he was wanting was not something that came in a delivery box. He was going after Lexie, and nothing could stop him now.

* * *

When she had been alive before, she knew one simple truth in life: there was not much that felt better than the feeling of a first shower after a long time without one - that was legal or easily attainable, at least. And she had gone far, _far_ too long without one, so as the first drops of water fell from the shower head, it felt like heaven on Earth. “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, running the bar of soap from the soap dish over her body, allowing the dirt to stream off her body in a torrent of soapy water. Never again would she go this long without showering. She made a mental note to take a bubble bath sometime in the near future. Soak in the bubbles and feel warm and comfortable to her heart’s content.

A squeaking noise came from the bathroom tile, and she peered through the frosted glass of the shower door. Outside the door stood a figure of a man in silhouette. “Is this a private shower, or can anyone join?” Mark asked, running his fingers along the pane of glass.

“It’s private,” she said, pirouetting her body so that she faced the door, “ _but_ private doesn’t have to mean alone, if we don’t want it to. Something private,” she continued, tracing the path that Mark’s fingers had etched, “can be shared between two people after all, such as ourselves.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s always been a yes as far as I’m concerned.”

Whatever clothes he had been wearing were shed in quick order as he sprung the door open and almost leaped into the shower. Lexie giggled as he grabbed her by the waist and pinned her up against the cool, tile wall. “You have no idea,” he said, “how long I’ve wanted to do this to you.” And then he opened his mouth against hers and kissed her, long and slow, feeling the warmth of her mouth pressed up against his. When they broke apart, it was only to rest their foreheads against each other’s and smile at each other. “It was just as good as I remembered,” he said. “Better, maybe, because - because I never thought I’d get to feel it again, and then, I _did_ -”

“Shh,” she whispered, her voice only just audible above the sound of the water pouring from the shower. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen to me again. We’re here.” She coursed her hands over the planes of his body, feeling every dip and scar with pronounced precision. “Is there anything else you’ve wanted to do to me? All those months alone, you had to come up with a few ideas -”

“It’s going to take a lifetime to do all of them.” His eyes grew dark with lust, and he nipped a small kiss at the base of her throat as his fingers danced along her thigh. “Where do you want to start?”

“What do you think would work best, for where we are now?” Coyness was a practiced virtue of hers, and she knew it worked so well on Mark. And it _was_ working, she could tell, because his pupils were becoming more and more dilated as she went along with the charade. “I mean, I could help you, or you could help me, or we could -”

“ _This_.” He replaced his fingers with the tip of his cock, before pushing inside her in two solid strokes. For their first time back together, foreplay was overrated. “Lexie. Look at me, Lexie,” he said, stroking her chin with his index finger.

Having him inside her felt so good. It felt - _right_ , like everything made sense in the world again now that Mark was bucking his hips upward to propel further into her, his free hand running everywhere it could reach as the other hand held her against the wall. If one of them slipped, the whole thing would tumble to pieces. That, and they would probably have to go to the emergency room for a broken bone or a concussion, and that would be a fantastic way to reveal to everyone that she was not dead anymore. She rolled her hips downward and met him somewhere in the middle, reveling in the feeling.

His hand teased at her nipple, his fingers plucking at it, and then - she heard voices from outside the bathroom. “Shit!” she said, suspended there in her position. “Mark? Did you have company coming over and you didn’t tell me?”

He froze mid-thrust and looked down at her, a note of franticness slipping through his lust-filled exterior. “I _think_ it’s Callie and Arizona. Probably checking on me since they haven’t heard from me in a few days, and they want to make sure my corpse is not decomposing into the couch cushions, or that I’m not the victim of some sort of surgical abduction ring. At least, it better be them. If it’s not -”

“Are you going to go out and talk to them? You can just tell them that you’re okay, not decomposing or fighting for your head or hands, and then you can come back in here,” she said, preening a bit and fluffing her hair as she spoke, “and continue what you’re doing to me.”

The door to the bathroom opened just then. “Mark?” Callie’s voice called out. “Are you - _sorry_. Didn’t realize you were in the shower - _oh_. _Oh_. Sorry, Mark. Sorry, Lexie.” The words had just left her mouth before she realized what it was she had said. “ _Lexie_? Or is that the doppelganger of Lexie? I knew you missed her, Mark, but you didn’t have to have sex in the shower with her twin!”

“Callie?” Lexie asked, slipping off Mark and kissing his shoulder blade. “It’s me. _Me_ , me. Not my twin, not my doppelganger, but the real and true Lexie.”

“We all watched you die out there. There’s _no_ way you lived through that. No way,” Arizona said, piping into the conversation. She looked down at her leg; the prosthetic shin poked out from under her pants, proving once and for all that the plane crash was not just some bad dream that they were all waking up from at the same time.

“Let’s go out into the living room,” Mark said. “I think the four of us need to have a talk. Clear a few things up regarding what has come about tonight.”

* * *

Lexie wore an old shirt of Mark’s, and Mark had thrown back on the pants he had been wearing, and the two of them looked mildly presentable to guests as they sat on the couch together, the remainder of their Thai feast discarded into the garbage bin. His arm draped over her neck, holding her close to him. “Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

“That’s actually Lexie, right? You didn’t somehow manage to perfect perfect artificial intelligence in a perfectly human-like robotic body, did you?” Callie asked, giving Lexie a suspicious look as she glanced over at her.

“It’s me. You can pinch me if you want. I’m not metallic at all. Just skin, bone, muscle, DNA, water, oxygen, carbon -” Lexie said with a grin. “You know, like you or Arizona.”

“She sounds just like Lexie.”

“That’s because it _is_ Lexie.”

“How did - what happened?” Arizona asked. “How did she come back? Did you do some weird ritual to raise her from the dead?”

“Kind of,” Mark said. “But it was not really a ritual, I’d say. More of an adventure?”

Lexie cleared her throat. “Basically, I was haunting Mark, and he wasn’t supposed to see me, except, oops, he apparently could. Which is like, earth-shatteringly bad for us dead people. And then he teams up with Izzie - because Izzie’s still in love with George -”

Callie’s face blanched at the mention of the possibility of Izzie and George being together, and Arizona clasped their hands together tightly. “Shhh, Calliope,” she said, whispering to her in a soft, soothing voice, “it’s nothing to worry about. It’s not going to affect you.”

“But my marriage - to George - she - _ruined_ -”

“But you have _me_ now. Don’t worry about Izzie. Izzie needs to do Izzie, and you need to do me. That’s all there is to it.”

Callie relaxed into Arizona and nodded, letting out a slow exhale of breath. “Alright. I’m okay now. I’m okay. I promise. Sorry. Continue.”

“- And, so, the two of them managed to find the way that people can transport between this life and the afterlife, and crossed over. And, long story short, the four of us met up and made it back here and George and Izzie went back to Izzie’s place, and that’s basically it.”

“So you’re back for good? Are you coming back to work?”

Lexie laughed. “Back for good, yes, but I think it might be a little difficult to explain my newfound reincarnation to Owen. ‘Yep, so, by the way, I’m not dead anymore, and can I have my job back, please?’”

“What do you plan to do, then?”

“I just got back from being dead for about four months! My plans involve spending time with Mark tonight and sleeping later. Anything else for the future is still up in the air.” She grinned, recalling a conversation she had once had with George. “Maybe I’ll go to Tahiti and take Mark with me. I hear it’s nice this time of year.” Callie and Arizona traded knowing smirks, and Mark clasped Lexie closer to him. That was more like it.

As they said goodbye to Callie and Arizona a short while later, Lexie amended her earlier mental note: she would not be taking her desired bubble bath alone. Mark would be right there with her, throwing bubbles in her face and rubbing up against her, smoothing soap over the contours of her back and spine. She did not think that he would turn down an invitation like that, and she smiled a mischievous little smile. Maybe later. She needed to make a trip to Bath and Body Works anyway and buy some bubble bath for this little bubbly expedition she had planned.

* * *

In two different parts of the Seattle area that night, two couples laid in bed together, basking in each other’s company and warmth. “What are you looking forward to most about tomorrow?” Mark asked Lexie as she lay on his chest, combing his fingers through her hair as it splayed in a fan shape over his torso. He breathed in the scent of his shampoo and soap on her body. It was real. If nothing else, what they had done in the shower - and in the hallway, and in his bed - proved to him over and over again that Lexie was indeed as real as anything could have ever been, and that their love that they shared was still as intact as it ever was. The fact that Callie and Arizona had stopped by and seen Lexie was a bonus. He was not going crazy after all, or on some sort of drug side effect; if he was going crazy, then so were two other highly-renowned, practicing surgeons, and then all of Seattle was more or less screwed. Especially if they happened to be a child or in dire need of orthopedic care.

“Sleeping in late, eating a really good bagel and drinking cups and cups of coffee, seeing the sun set and then rise again the next day, reading a good book that came out recently - or perhaps re-reading an old favorite, wearing clothes again, doing the Sunday crossword in my pajamas -” she tapped out each response with the tip of her index finger on the flat plane of his chest as she said them, “- and waking up safe and in your arms. Simple things like that are the things I’ve missed the most.”

“I don’t think anyone said _anything_ about wearing clothes,” Mark replied, leaning over and skimming his lips along the top of her hairline, sighing with a sense of contented bliss. This was what he wanted, after all. Bagels and coffee and Lexie in his arms every morning and night. Anything else was icing on the cake.

“I think we can find a way to negotiate on that,” she said, winking as she slid her hands down his sides, gliding her fingertips over his hipbone. “I can put them on, and you can take them off. And maybe we can go somewhere, when we go to replace my wardrobe, and I can - you know, put on a show for you then?”

“Deal. You had me before that last part, but deal. Definitely a deal. Not sending this one back to the banker for a chance at a better offer.”

They were silent for a moment, curled into each other’s touch and embrace. “Mark?” she asked, tilting her head so that she could face him. “Did you mean - when I was laying there, you know - those things about marrying me? And - and having kids together?”

“I meant every word I said, and even those that I didn’t say, I still meant them too. What made you - why do you ask?”

“Because you haven’t mentioned any of it once since we’ve been back together - and I thought that maybe you had forgotten? Or -” her face grew downcast as she continued to speak, “that maybe you hadn’t meant all of it as you said it?”

“Oh, _Lexie_ ,” he said, wrapping one of his arms around her waist and pulled her closer to him. With the motion, her skin was almost melded together with his, given their newly-tightened proximity. “I could never forget what I told you that day. When you - when you’re in a situation like we were - there’s absolutely no reason to lie. When you think that you’re -” he paused, burying his face into her hair to hide the tears that threatened to come. It was still difficult for him to think about that fateful day, even now. “When you _know_ that you’re likely talking to the person you love more than life itself for the very last time, you want to tell them everything. Leave nothing out. All the cards are out on the table and the house wins every goddamn time. I didn’t want you to spend the rest of eternity wondering and thinking that I didn’t love you or that we weren’t meant to be together. That’s absolutely false, and you know it now, if you didn’t then.”

“So, then, why -”

He cut her off at the pass. “Patience, my dear,” he said, his eyes dancing and twinkling with amusement. “All good things come to those who wait. I didn’t want to overwhelm you with coming back and then immediately throwing a marriage proposal on your lap - besides, a guy’s got to plan for things like that. Make it something you’d never forget.”

“You wouldn’t have overwhelmed me,” she said in protest, but she could not help but feel a smile tug across her face. “And I could never -”

“Let’s take it one day at a time. Bagels and sunsets tomorrow, engagement in the near-ish future,” he said. Waiting sounded miserable to him, but he did not expect Lexie to make the jump from supernatural being to his wife in almost no time at all.

She scooted up to be on eye-level with him. Caressing his jawline, she whispered in a hot, shallow breath against his cheek, “taking it one day at a time sounds like an absolutely _terrible_ idea. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” She pressed her lips to his; her tongue darted out from between her lips and glided along the contours of his lower lip, tracing the line between where lip ended and chin began. When he parted his lips, she slipped her tongue inside his mouth, and he did the same with her. Their lips meshed together, slow and languid, without a care in the world.

They shifted apart by gradual steps, before separating their lips and ending the kiss, and Mark leaned his forehead against Lexie’s. The angle allowed for a better perspective on staring straight into her eyes, and he pushed a lock of loose hair back behind her ear. “Hey there,” he whispered. Without trying to, he was using his most seductive, husky whisper - the things having Lexie back in his life did for him.

“Hey,” she said, echoing his words and matching the tone.

“You have a point,” he said. “Let’s talk about it in the morning. We’re both exhausted.”

“Okay.” She yawned and stretched her arms out above her head, almost as if to prove his point.

“And Lexie?”

“Yeah?”

“Tomorrow, if your coffee cup comes with a diamond ring attached to the rim, it’s not because the barista at the coffee place fell completely madly in love with you and wants to whisk you off to Vegas to get married by Elvis or a space alien or something, okay?”

“Okay? So?”

“I’m just telling you. Don’t say yes to the barista if that happens. Say yes to me.”

She laughed and shoved playfully at his chest. “I wouldn’t say yes to anyone _but_ you, Mark, you don’t have to worry at all about that. And I will say yes, whenever it is that you ask me. Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.” She hid a grin along the top of his arm. “I’m just telling you.”

“You don’t know how happy you’ve made me, Lexie,” he said, “every day of my life.”

They did not know yet what any of their tomorrows would bring, but they were more than willing to find out - together, this time, working in tandem instead of flying solo.

* * *

“I’ll take the couch tonight,” George said, looking through the linen closet. “I mean, I don’t want to inconvenience you at all, so - I’ll take the couch. Do you have any spare pillows I can use?”

She looked over from where she sat on the couch. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “You can sleep in my bed tonight, if you want. It’s more comfortable than this lumpy old thing, anyway.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me in your bed.”

“Would you rather sleep on the lumpy couch I bought at Goodwill, or would you rather sleep in my nice, soft bed? I don’t care. It’s not like we haven’t shared a bed or slept together before,” she said. “Besides, I - I don’t really want to be alone anymore,” she continued, dropping her voice to a sad whisper. “It’s been so long - _too_ long, even - since I’ve been able to let someone into my life like this, like you are now. I just want to feel as though you want to have me there with you.”

“I do. Of course I do,” he said. “I want _you_ , Izzie. I want to love you, and feel you, and hold you, and be with you. _Always_.”

They made their way into her bedroom and sat on the side of her bed, their legs swinging against the side of the mattress. “So,” she said, “I’m not sure what I have that you can wear for tonight, but if you can find something, feel more than free to wear it.”

“Okay.”

A short time later, they both laid in bed, George wearing a t-shirt that Izzie had found in the back of her closet - it had always been too large for her, but it fit George just right - and Izzie in her pajamas. They held each other close and looked into each other’s eyes. “What do you want to do tonight?” Izzie asked, running her finger along the collar of George’s shirt. “Sleep?”

“Or we could -” he slid his hand down to cup the curvature of her ass, “Yeah. No. Sleep sounds like a good idea. Very astute idea, Izzie. Let’s go with that.”

“Are you wanting to have sex with me?” She leaned backward into the brush of his hand.

“Izzie, I think most people who are attracted to women would want to have sex with you on a given day, but - yes.” He buried his head into the pillow and let out a muffled groan. What he had said was _intended_ to be a compliment, but to him, it came across as backhanded and maybe even a little harsh or mean-spirited. “Now you probably wouldn’t want to, even if you had before.”

She fumbled with the buttons on the front of her pajamas, unbuttoning each button without much in the way of fine dexterity. “Does this answer your question?” she asked, pushing the shirt backwards on her arms to reveal her bare chest. “I love you, George. I regret that I never got to tell you that before. And I - I want to make this work between us.”

“I love you too,” he said, kissing a line of sloppy kisses from her jaw, down her neck, and ending just above her breasts. “I’ll never get tired of hearing that from you. Or saying it to you.”

“Me too,” she said, guiding her hand downward to brush her fingers against his cloth-covered groin.

“Izzie,” he whispered in an exhale of breath, “are you really sure that you want to do this now? We can wait, if you want.” Memories of how their relationship had gone in the past flashed by him in a panic-stricken haze. _Tragic_ was the word that stuck out to him from their descriptions of what had gone on. He did not want this miraculous second chance that they had to be described as tragic. A million other more preferable adjectives came to mind: fantastic, mind-blowing, legendary, wonderful, to name but a few.

“Are you scared?”

“Scared that we’ll repeat the past, yeah.”

She scooted her pajama pants and panties down her legs and kicked them off to land under the sheets somewhere, before guiding his shirt over his head and down to the floor somewhere. He took hold of his boxers and pushed them down, and they were both fully unclothed but still covered in their totality by her blanket over them. “This is not the past,” she said, fumbling with her legs a little as she positioned herself in close proximity to his cock. If he would just move to be positioned between her legs, they would be having sex - no, making love was more the right term for what they would be doing. It was never just about having sex when it came to George. There were also all the emotions that came part and parcel with it.

When he hesitated, she looked over at him. “Are _you_ sure?” she asked. “Because you look like you’re debating whether you would rather have pastrami on rye or turkey on wheat for lunch tomorrow.”

He shook his head back and forth in disagreement. He then picked up the line of smudged kisses where it had stopped, descending further and further down her torso until he turned around at her waist and came back up, ending with a sloppy kiss planted on her lips. “Yeah. I’m sure. More than.”

She took his cock in her hands and rolled it gently back and forth. His head lolled back as she did so, and he groaned her name almost instantly, “ _Izzie._ If you want me to last at all,” he said, “let’s - let’s -” And then, she guided it inside her, and they were moving back and forth in a subtle rhythm, trying to match each other’s motion. Izzie looked up at George with a wide, easy grin on her face and love in her eyes, and George matched her expression in return. They rocked back and forth, fumbling with where hands and feet should go, attempting to figure out how to mesh into one single, fluid, synchronized motion. The mattress squeaked under their weight and action, surrendering as two voices called out each other’s names.

“Oh, _George_!” she moaned, holding onto him for dear life as she saw sparks fly in front of her eyes and color the world around her.

“I-Izzie!” He held out her name as he orgasmed, his fingers running along the underside of her breast.

The sex they had had was not tragic. It was not perfect, either, but it was not tragic of all things, and that was the most they could have asked for out of one time. There would be more times in the future, times wherein they could work to improve on it and sink into the rhythms of more experienced lovers. This time, they knew how much emotion played a part in what they were doing, though, and this time, there was more at risk: to lose now would be to lose everything they had worked so hard to gain.

* * *

“Remember how we always said that our timing sucked?” Izzie said, after they had shifted apart. She nuzzled her head into George’s shoulder and looked up at him. From this angle, he looked so peaceful and angelic, with that serene smile seemingly imprinted on his face. She could look at him this way forever. “And that we could try being _us_ again - maybe someday?”

“Yeah, so? I remember that.”

“This. _This_ is our promised someday. It took us a while to get here, and it was a hell of a lot more complicated than by all rights it ever should have been to get to this point, but this is it. Our someday.”

He leant over to kiss the top of her head and brush his nose down her hair. “Oh, is it, now?”

“I told you before, George. I don’t break my promises. We were going to get it, one way or another. We all were.”

- _fini_ -

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my artist, red_b_rackham, for all of the lovely art you made for this and for helping me with remembering some specifics on Grey's canon that played a major role in this story. You rock! <3
> 
> As well, thanks go to my best friend/cheerleader/beta, C. Despite the fact that the angst factor on this fic was through the roof and therefore it was SO not your thing, you listened to me patiently and helped me work out so many of the kinks with this story. There is literally no way this story would be anything more than a couple thousand words on my computer without your guidance and cheerleading. You're amazing. <3


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